tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-136743062018-05-24T03:40:09.973-04:00Taboo Truths by Jason ZenithTruths suppressed by the Establishment and society generally, and analytical overviews of reality to deepen understanding. All contents copyrighted. Brief quotations with attribution and URL [jasonzenith.blogspot.com] permitted.
Check out my other blog at taboo-truths.blogspot.comJason Zenithhttps://plus.google.com/118413632629344209658noreply@blogger.comBlogger638125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13674306.post-72639306649639838792018-05-23T18:10:00.000-04:002018-05-23T18:10:03.761-04:00FBI Caught Spying On Trump Presidential Campaign- and Trump Attacked for Objecting!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">We're in an era of total supremacy of the secret police state when they are caught infiltrating a presidential campaign of one of two political cartel parties (of course they do it to the Greens, Socialists, Communists, etc.) and the president's demand for an investigation is met with howls of outrage from politicians (Democrats) and the corporate media chorus.<br /><br />You'd think the FBI would have to run for cover. Instead we're being hysterically ranted at that Trump is "threatening national security" (!) and "endangering lives" (!!) by ordering the Department of "Justice" to investigate, and wanting to know who the spy was. (Turns out he was some shitheel retired professor.)<br /><br />Sure, Trump is loathsome, but this is yet another example of how the Democratic Party and corporate media have put the secret police agencies on a pedestal and demand that we worship them. It's disgusting.<br /><br />These are the same agencies that daily commit perjury, burglaries, stealing personal property, issuing 50,000 bogus "national security" letters a year demanding personal bank, medical, and every kind of record under the pretense of "investigating terrorism," and oftentimes assassinations.<br /><br />They are no one to glorify.<br /><br /><br /><br /></div>Jason Zenithhttps://plus.google.com/118413632629344209658noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13674306.post-90347691224389383192018-05-10T15:44:00.000-04:002018-05-14T16:11:24.125-04:00Trump Opens Door to Revived Iranian Nuclear Program, Europe Confirms It's America's Bitch, and Israel and Saudi Arabia are Kvelling<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Kvelling is Yiddish. It means "to be extraordinarily pleased; especially, to be bursting with pride." Certainly the Israelis and Saudis have reason to be. Both nations are eager for the U.S. to go to war with Iran, and have been pushing the U.S. in that direction for years.<br /><br />Trump finally carried out his threat to kill the hard-won nuclear agreement with Iran. Two years of negotiations by the U.S., France, Germany, Britain, China, and Russia, all arrayed against Iran, with U.S.-imposed sanctions choking the Iranian economy, produced the best deal that could be squeezed from the theocrats ruling that nation. Iran surrendered ALL its enriched uranium, agreed to permanently shut down a reactor capable of producing plutonium, mothballed its centrifuges, and accepted extremely stringent oversight by the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency).&nbsp; All this to last for 15 years.<br /><br />If Trump wanted a better deal, he had plenty of time to negotiate one. But he has demagogically insisted for several years that the agreement was the "worst deal ever." A preposterous assertion.<br /><br />The European "partners" (in reality, they're nothing more than junior lackeys to U.S. Imperialism) pleaded with and cajoled Trump to try to make him see reason, to no avail. French President Emmanuel Macron came all the way to Washington and endured demeaning treatment by Trump (Trump ostentatiously pretending to pick something off Macron's suit in front of the world press and announcing it was "dandruff," forcing Macron to submit to the insult) for absolutely nothing. Britain dispatched their foreign minister, the buffoon Boris Johnson, to Washington to pointlessly lobby various Trump regime apparatchiks on the matter.<br /><br />Macron addressed the U.S. Congress, delivering a relatively honest speech which no doubt annoyed most of that body.<br /><br />The Europeans are already caving in, reaffirming their status as the U.S.' bitch. This proves that the European Union is a bust. It was supposed to allow Europe to swing its proper weight. Instead it is a bad joke. The European bourgeoisie just cannot or will not free themselves from their position of slavish subordination to the U.S.<br /><br />Trump has made clear that, as usual, foreign corporations must abide by U.S. "law" and conform to U.S. foreign policy. Just a day after Trump wrecked the agreement with Iran, which the U.S. got Russia, China, Germany, Britain, France, and the EU to sign on to against Iran, his Ambassador to Germany is already ordering German companies to shut down their Iranian business operations&nbsp;<b>"immediately."&nbsp;</b>Well, when you're the Boss of the World, you can issue such orders.<br /><br />Unless companies want to quit the U.S. market, which is many times the size of the Iranian one, AND subject themselves to ruinous U.S. "fines," AND risk criminal indictments of the company and its executives, effectively confining those executives to their home countries or risk arrest and extradition to the U.S. to "face American justice" (decades in prison) for refusing to be agents of U.S. Imperialist foreign policy, these non-U.S. businesses have to knuckle under to U.S.&nbsp;<i>diktat</i>.<br /><br />Some U.S. media "commentators" are fatuously saying canceling the agreement of the U.S. government was Trump "making good on a campaign pledge." As if Trump feels an obligation to keep his word on&nbsp;<u><i>anything</i></u>. And he made numerous pledges to snooker people into voting for him- all the good ones he has reneged on, only keeping the venal ones. (As I expected.)<br /><br />Here are some choice excerpts that the bombastic&nbsp; blustering bullyboy Trump spewed in making his announcement on May 8th:<br /><br />Trump- "this deal is catastrophic for America, for Israel, and for the whole Middle East."<br /><br />He sneered at "the decaying and rotten structure of the current deal." (Reminds me of Adolf Hitler "freeing" Germany from the "shackles" of the rotten Versailles Treaty.)<br /><br />Trump says the new deal he pretends he'll force on Iran "will benefit all of Iran and the Iranian people." (I'm sure he cares so&nbsp;<i>much&nbsp;</i>about the Iranian people! This is a guy who's trying to ban all Muslims from the U.S.) He wants to throw in "terrorism" and Iranian "meddling" in Syria and Yemen as part of new demands on Iran.<br /><br />Trump threatens "any nation" that aids "Iran in its [non-existent] quest for a nuclear weapon" will also get slammed with U.S. sanctions.<br /><br />Of course, Iran wasn't developing nuclear weapons, it was developing the&nbsp;<i>capability&nbsp;</i>to develop such weapons. And right now, iran isn't even doing THAT!<br /><br />But the lying jackass demagogue who is president of the U.S. Empire could care less about facts, as he has shown throughout his entire adult life. Nor did the U.S. media bother informing the millions who are forced to rely on it for information that what Trump said was false. For all their bleatings about his "lies," they reinforce some of his lies.<br /><br />Iran now has to decide whether to accept being completely ripped off, having surrendered its nuclear program (mainly consisting of uranium enrichment) for nothing, or restart it. Trump is making gangster threats implying violence. Many imperialists in the U.S. and Israel, and the evil, medieval rulers of Saudi Arabia, have long been urging the U.S. to bomb Iran. (Dying U.S. Senator John&nbsp;<b><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uk7v-cILAA" target="_blank">McCain would love to see that</a></b>.)<br /><br />Iran's major commodity is, of course, oil. And since oil is traded on the international market in U.S. dollars, and the U.S. Treasury Department controls dollar transactions, that makes it extremely difficult for Iran to sell its oil without U.S. permission. So the U.S. has Iran over a barrel, so to speak. (One of Saddam Hussein's fatal mistakes was floating the idea of using a medium of exchange other than the U.S. dollar for oil transactions. The U.S. tends to react violently to impingements on its power.)<br /><br />The Israelis and Saudis are eager for the U.S. to wage war on Iran, especially a bombing campaign. Terrorism ("covert action") would also be part of the war. The U.S. under Obama infiltrated Special Forces teams into Iran to plant surveillance devices, including radiation monitors disguised as bricks in walls, and spy gadgets to monitor truck traffic disguised as rocks. The Israelis of course were busily assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists, creating terror to discourage Iranian scientists from participating in nuclear research. And Obama infiltrated the Stuxnet malware into Iran's nuclear program computer system, destroying centrifuges.<br /><br />Understand that it is official U.S. policy to overthrow the Iranian government. (This would be the second time they did that, the first being in 1953, which destroyed Iranian democracy.)&nbsp; The U.S. is still bitter that the client dictator it installed in 1953, the Shah, was overthrown in 1979. And while the quarter million Iranians who died under the brutal reign of the Shah are never, ever mentioned in U.S. media, they still reference the so-called "hostage crisis," when the apparatchiks in the U.S. embassy in Tehran were&nbsp; seized and held for 444 days, and the U.S. media engaged in a daily drumbeat of hysterical propaganda about it. ABC "News" even started an entire evening program devoted to the "crisis," which became "Nightline," hosted by Kissinger maven Ted Koppel. What's never said, what has been consigned to the memory hole, is&nbsp;<i><b>why&nbsp;</b></i>Iran seized the U.S. apparatchiks. Obviously a key part of the story. But not in the U.S. propaganda version of it.<br /><br />Iran warned the Jimmy Carter regime not to give sanctuary to the fleeing. Shah. Then Henry Kissinger called the president of the U.S. and transmitted an order from David Rockefeller, a man at the apex of the U.S. ruling class, that Carter must allow the Shah in. Carter protested that there would be bad consequences, but obeyed his master. (Carter was chosen to be president in 1976 by the Rockefeller-created Trilateral Commission, which assigned Zbigniew Brzezinski as Carter's "national security advisor." Brzezinski went on the engineer the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, something he has boasted about.&nbsp;<i>Time&nbsp;</i>magazine, an organ run by Trilateral Commission members, presented Carter to the American public as the second coming of JFK.)<br /><br />Well, the "hostage-taking" duly followed the Shah's entry into the U.S., the resulting media-generated "crisis" ultimately cost Carter re-election. And the racist neo-fascist Ronald Reagan, running against Carter in the 1980 election, made a&nbsp;<i>sub rosa</i>&nbsp;deal with the Khomeini regime to only free the U.S. personnel minutes after Carter was no longer president.<br /><br />Now back to the present. What of the non-U.S. lackey nations that are a party to the nuclear agreement with Iran, China and Russia? They too operate under the oppressive umbrella of the U.S.-controlled global financial system.&nbsp;<b>[1]</b><br /><br />And the U.S. has a veritable galaxy of laws, rules, and regulations that give it infinite power over the financial transactions of others. No bank that wishes to do transactions outside its home country's boundaries can defy the U.S. People and companies that have never set foot in the U.S. or done any action inside the U.S. are routinely indicted by the U.S. and either extradited or kidnapped to "face justice" inside the U.S. and ultimately be subjected to often draconian sentences imprisoned in the vast U.S. gulag. (The U.S., with about 4.7% of the world's population, holds 25% of the entire planet's prisoners. The U.S. imprisoners a higher percentage of its adult population- close to 1%- than any nation on earth. China, a country with<i>&nbsp;four times</i>&nbsp;the population of the U.S., has slightly&nbsp;<i>fewer&nbsp;</i>prisoners.)<br /><br />The U.S. considers its laws binding on everyone on earth- and indeed enforces them. The railroading of the Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, who was set up in Thailand by U.S. DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) agents pretending to be arms buyers for&nbsp; the Colombian rebel group FARC, and who now sits in a U.S. prison, is one of many examples. (What the hell is an alleged drug agency doing setting up fake arms deals to entrap foreign citizens? Good questions.) Britain has shipped hapless citizens to the U.S. to face bogus charges, to the outrage of its own media and public.<br /><br />So what does Europe do when its arms are twisted by the U.S.? It says "Uncle!" Europe is paying the economic price for U.S.-imposed sanctions on Russia to punish Russia for "meddling" in Ukraine. The U.S. has fined Europe's banks billions of dollars in a shakedown racket for violating sanctions on countries the U.S. doesn't like. (Other nation's banks have been hit too. See&nbsp;<b><a href="https://risk.thomsonreuters.com/content/dam/openweb/documents/pdf/risk/infographic/fines-banks-breached-us-sanctions-infographic.pdf" target="_blank">chart</a></b>.)<br /><br />But the cowardly bourgeois rulers of Europe are good at one thing: punching down. They sure know how to oppress their own people, as the corrupt Spanish government of the Francoist Mariano Rajoy is doing in Catalonia, or as the remorseless British Prime Minister Theresa May is doing, deporting tens of thousands of Commonwealth citizens who came to Britain legally decades ago and are now being reclassified as "illegal" because&nbsp;<i>the British government failed to issue them documents when they arrived</i>. Theresa May, the architect of the Grenfell Towers Fire massacre who slashed funding for fire and police protection starting in her previous job as Interior Secretary. (A job in which she began the targeting of immigrants.)<br /><br />Anyway, sit back and enjoy the coming war between Iran and the U.S./Israel/Saudi Arabia. Iran is not completely alone. It is fighting side by side with Russia in Syria to prop up the murderous Assad regime. It also has the loyal support of Lebanon's Hezbollah movement and militia. (The Israelis have been busily bombing Iranian weapons shipments in Syria they claim are destined for Hezbollah.) Every time Iran counterattacks, except the propagandists and governments of the U.S. side to shriek "IRANIAN TERRORISM!"<br /><br />Israel has wasted no time lighting the fuse. Today they bombed&nbsp;<i>fifty&nbsp;</i>Iranian targets inside Syria, using as justification an alleged Iranian missile fired into the Golan Heights (former Syrian territory that Israel conquered in the 1967 war). No mention in U.S. (and other "Western") media that this follows months of Israeli bombing raids on Iranian targets inside Syria, with no response from Iran at all until now, with the alleged missile. (Or 20 missiles, as CBS later asserted. CBS is virtually a propaganda arm of the Israeli government in the U.S.) Israel threatened more to come if the Iranians don't take it lying down. Russia has expressed alarm over the Israeli pummeling.<br /><br />This war, if it comes, will go on for years. Like some other wars the U.S. started in the region, eh?<br /><br /><br /><b>1]&nbsp;&nbsp;</b>The U.S. isn't even satisfied with controlling the world's financial system. It even has to spy on everybody and hack into bank computers. Even SWIFT, the system for international bank transactions, was hacked by the NSA. (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication- SWIFT. SWIFT has cut off Iran's banks from the rest of the world, on U.S. orders.)<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>Jason Zenithhttps://plus.google.com/118413632629344209658noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13674306.post-20264145687941924642018-05-01T16:33:00.000-04:002018-05-01T16:33:11.772-04:00Idiot or Moron? The Great Debate over Trump's Intellectual Capacity<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"> <span style="font-family: Calibri, serif; font-size: large;"><span lang="en">General John Kelly, </span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif; font-size: large;"><span lang="en">current (but maybe not for long) White House chief of staff,</span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif; font-size: large;"><span lang="en">is reported to have called his boss, the President of the United States of America, one Donald J(ackass) Trump, an "idiot." Kelly denies it, calling the reports "bullshit."</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif; font-size: large;"><span lang="en">&nbsp;</span></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br /><div style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0.14in;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif; font-size: large;"><span lang="en">Rex "Big Oil" Tillerson, the former Secretary of State who Trump fired via Twitter so the whole world would get the news before Rex did, was reported to have referred to Trump as a "fucking moron." Tillerson repeatedly refused to confirm or deny saying it, a tacit confirmation that he </span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif; font-size: large;"><span lang="en"><i>had </i></span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif; font-size: large;"><span lang="en"><span style="font-style: normal;">said it.</span></span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"></span><div style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0.14in;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif; font-size: large;"><span lang="en"><span style="font-style: normal;">Which man is right?</span></span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"></span><div style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0.14in;"> <span style="font-family: Calibri, serif; font-size: large;"><span lang="en"><span style="font-style: normal;">Let's look at definitions. An idiot is:</span></span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"></span><div style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif; font-size: large;"><span lang="en"><span style="font-style: normal;">1. </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif; font-size: large;"><span lang="en"><i>Informal</i></span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif; font-size: large;"><span lang="en"><span style="font-style: normal;">. an utterly foolish or senseless person:</span></span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"></span><div style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif; font-size: large;"><span lang="en"><span style="font-style: normal;">If you think you can get elected president, you're an idiot!</span></span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"></span><div lang="en" style="font-style: normal; line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span> </div><span style="font-size: large;"></span><div style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif; font-size: large;"><span lang="en"><span style="font-style: normal;">2. Psychology. (no longer in technical use; considered offensive) a person of the lowest order in a former and discarded classification of mental retardation, having a mental age of less than three years old and an intelligence quotient under 25.</span></span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"></span><div lang="en" style="font-style: normal; line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span> </div><span style="font-size: large;"></span><div style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif; font-size: large;"><span lang="en"><span style="font-style: normal;">Whereas a moron is:</span></span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"></span><div lang="en" style="font-style: normal; line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span> </div><span style="font-size: large;"></span><div style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif; font-size: large;"><span lang="en"><span style="font-style: normal;">1. </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif; font-size: large;"><span lang="en"><i>Informal</i></span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif; font-size: large;"><span lang="en"><span style="font-style: normal;">. a person who is notably stupid or lacking in good judgment:</span></span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"></span><div style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif; font-size: large;"><span lang="en"><span style="font-style: normal;">I wonder why they elected that narrow-minded moron to the presidency.</span></span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"></span><div lang="en" style="font-style: normal; line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span> </div><span style="font-size: large;"></span><div style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif; font-size: large;"><span lang="en"><span style="font-style: normal;">2. Psychology. (no longer in technical use; now considered offensive) a person of borderline intelligence in a former and discarded classification of mental retardation, having an intelligence quotient of 50 to 69.</span></span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"></span><div lang="en" style="font-style: normal; line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span> </div><span style="font-size: large;"></span><div style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif; font-size: large;"><span lang="en"><span style="font-style: normal;">Under the discredited psychological definitions, it is clearly worse to be an idiot than to be a moron. </span></span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"></span><div lang="en" style="font-style: normal; line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span> </div><span style="font-size: large;"></span><div style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif; font-size: large;"><span lang="en"><span style="font-style: normal;">Trump clearly lacks good judgment. On the other hand, he seems to have excellent shark-like instincts. Socially, politically, and in terms of the psychological manipulation of others, he is brilliant, unfortunately for us.</span></span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"></span><div lang="en" style="font-style: normal; line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span> </div><span style="font-size: large;"></span><div style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif; font-size: large;"><span lang="en"><span style="font-style: normal;">And while he </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif; font-size: large;"><span lang="en"><i>says </i></span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif; font-size: large;"><span lang="en"><span style="font-style: normal;">utterly foolish and senseless things, it is hard to conclude that he IS utterly foolish and senseless.</span></span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"></span><div lang="en" style="font-style: normal; line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span> </div><span style="font-size: large;"></span><div style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif; font-size: large;"><span lang="en"><span style="font-style: normal;">What he is is a pig-headed bigot, a man with a closed-mind who doesn't like to learn and who has strong prejudices about the world. Now he has U.S. government power to try and impose his beliefs about the world </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif; font-size: large;"><span lang="en"><i><b>on </b></i></span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif; font-size: large;"><span lang="en"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">the world.</span></span></span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"></span><div lang="en" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span> </div><span style="font-size: large;"></span><div style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif; font-size: large;"><span lang="en"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">But George Bush was the same. Just not as outr</span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span lang="en"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">é</span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif; font-size: large;"><span lang="en"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">.</span></span></span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"></span><div lang="en" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span> </div><span style="font-size: large;"></span><div style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif; font-size: large;"><span lang="en"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">And in regard to using U.S. power to bully, that's what U.S. power has been used for since the U.S. was created in the 18th century.</span></span></span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"></span><div lang="en" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span> </div><span style="font-size: large;"></span><div style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif; font-size: large;"><span lang="en"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Trump is rather like the Roman Emperor Nero. Or the Russian Tsar Ivan the Terrible. Or Vlad the Impaler. A particularly noxious ruler of a noxious system. People who think "the problem" is Trump ignore the fundamental reality. So accident that the Democratic Party, its political hacks, the establishment media, and the secret police agencies, ignore that reality. That is the system they are part of, that they wish to perpetuate.</span></span></span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"></span><div lang="en" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span> </div><span style="font-size: large;"></span><div style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif; font-size: large;"><span lang="en"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">More disappointing are their fellow travelers among the "alternative" media and putative "progressives." Useful idiots, they are. (That would be Lenin's definition of idiot.)</span></span></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></div><div style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></div><div style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif; font-size: large;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nJVG6ELczH0/WujNPv6wBUI/AAAAAAAABB8/atBU_5QI1u8wtGI46OZ8-gFIvUvzriiKACLcBGAs/s1600/trump-and-kelly.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="360" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nJVG6ELczH0/WujNPv6wBUI/AAAAAAAABB8/atBU_5QI1u8wtGI46OZ8-gFIvUvzriiKACLcBGAs/s640/trump-and-kelly.jpg" width="640" /></a></span></div><br /><span style="font-size: large;"></span><div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>Shaking hands with an idiot.</b></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-iUPDtEYBkRA/WujNcC2NnGI/AAAAAAAABCA/Q7dzd5vsFQADe-pOLSg5fVdk4gsTeOYdgCLcBGAs/s1600/rex%2BTillerson-fired%2Bby%2Ba%2Bmoron-%2Boh%2Bboy%2B.w710.h473.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="474" data-original-width="710" height="426" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-iUPDtEYBkRA/WujNcC2NnGI/AAAAAAAABCA/Q7dzd5vsFQADe-pOLSg5fVdk4gsTeOYdgCLcBGAs/s640/rex%2BTillerson-fired%2Bby%2Ba%2Bmoron-%2Boh%2Bboy%2B.w710.h473.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>Fired by a moron: Oh Boy!</b></span></span></div><div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>&nbsp;</b></span></span> </div><span style="font-size: large;"></span></div>Jason Zenithhttps://plus.google.com/118413632629344209658noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13674306.post-31445392938587542432018-04-23T15:26:00.001-04:002018-04-23T15:26:46.967-04:00Democratic Party Descends Deeper Into Political Dementia, Sues WikiLeaks, Russian Government Officials, and Trump Campaign For "Conspiracy To Attack U.S. Election"<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">U.S. elites love deriding exposes of their state crimes as "conspiracy theories," and painting the exponents of such factually substantiated crimes as paranoid, delusional crackpots.<br /><br />But that doesn't stop them from pushing ludicrous conspiracy theories of their own invention.<br /><br />For example, historically, social unrest in the U.S. has been attributed to a nefarious, hidden "communist conspiracy," including the movement of African-Americans to be free of racial oppression. The establishment media, politicians, and secret police agencies (first and foremost the FBI and CIA) have all relied on this propaganda trope- and seem to believe it themselves in many cases.<br /><br /> President Lyndon Johnson was convinced that the millions of people who marched against his war on Vietnam were zombie puppets controlled by the Kremlin, and he ordered the CIA to find the "links" between Moscow and the anti-war movement. (That movement, by the way, consisted of numerous organizations with wildly varying political orientations, and millions of people of all ages, classes, personalities, etc. So Lyndon Johnson's conspiracy theory, that his multifarious opposition to his vicious, criminal, murderous attack on Vietnam was all a creation of the Soviet Union, was truly demented,)<br /><br />Since the election of Trump as president over a year ago, the main U.S. secret police agencies (FBI, CIA, and to a lesser extent NSA), the Democratic Party, and most of the U.S. elite media (and much second and third tier media) has, day in and day out, assiduously peddled a conspiracy theory, that Donald Trump is a Manchurian Candidate elected and controlled by Vladimir Putin, the autocrat of Russia. Even elements of the allegedly alternative media, which is supposed to be in opposition to the establishment power structure and act as a corrective to the propaganda of the ruling structure, has drunk deeply of this hallucinogenic-spiked Kool-Aid.<br /><br />And now, the Democratic National Committee has dived off the deep end into the pool of delusion.<br /><br />Refusing to call for reform of the Electoral College, which prevented the person with the most votes, their party's candidate and Queen Bee Hillary Clinton from winning, instead the Democratic National Committee, headed by a horrible hack named Tom Perez, is once again acting in moral and political cowardice, absurdly scapegoating Russia for revealing the party's dirty conniving, WikiLeaks for providing a public service (information), and the winning Trump campaign. Perez and the DNC has filed a lawsuit in a U.S. Federal court in Manhattan alleging a conspiracy by Russian government officials, the Trump presidential campaign, and WikiLeaks to sabotage the Democrats' electoral prospects and elect Trump. <b>[1]</b><br /><br />Which is utterly ridiculous.<br /><br />The DNC's frivolous lawsuit names as defendants Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (he apparently hasn't suffered enough at U.S. hands yet), and the Russian Federation. The suit hysterically alleges "previously unimaginable treachery." The DNC chairman, the noxious creep and cynical political hack Tom Perez, beat his little breast with this pronouncement:<br /><br />"We're seeking justice and we're seeking deterrence." <br /><br />Revealing the emails that uncovered the DNC's treachery in the primaries to ensure the defeat of Senator Bernie Sanders and the victory of Queen Hillary, and the secret speech she made to an audience of high financiers in which she explained what she <i>really </i>stood for, and don't pay attention to all that guff she feeds the public, is hardly "previously unimaginable treachery."<br /><br />Here's real treachery from past U.S. elections. <br /><br />Nixon 1968. Conspired with the generals ruling "South" Vietnam to sabotage the Paris Peace talks being conducted by the Johnson regime, to help Nixon get elected president. Madame Chiang Kai-Shek was used as a go-between. Johnson knew what was happening from telephone taps.<br /><br />Reagan 1980. A deal was cut with Iran to not release the American imperialist hostages being held in the U.S. embassy/spy nest in Tehran in order to ensure Carter's defeat. Later U.S. arms were surreptitiously shipped to Iran, a country then publicly reviled by the U.S. government and media.<br /><br />But I digress.<br /><br />Since the proximate causes of Clinton's defeat was the archaic Electoral College, and then-FBI director James Comey's reigniting of the scandal of Clinton hiding her emails as Secretary of State on a private server, which he did only 10 days before the November 7 election, causing Clinton's advantage in the polls to plunge precipitously from a lead of 14% to just 3.5% (within the margin of error) or even in some polls, it is perverse for the Democratic Party to pick the scapegoats they have chosen.<br /><br />Given that this is the second election in two decades in which their candidate got more votes and "lost" because of the Electoral College (Al Gore and the party allowed the GOP to steal the 2000 Election in Florida, engineered by Florida Governor Jeb Bush, brother of "winner" George Bush), you'd think the Democrats would notice a problem with the fairness of the system. Instead we are subjected to propaganda screeching that "Russia is trying to undermine confidence in our elections!" and "Russia is attacking Our Democracy!" ("Our Democracy" is code for Our System of Rule, the corporate oligarchy, the bourgeois class dictatorship, the power establishment that cannot be voted away.)<br /><br />But the Democrats don't want to challenge the Electoral College. They also don't want to make a PEEP about the Republicans' success in disenfranchising traditional Democratic voters. They refused to challenge the stolen elections in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, all of which Trump "won" by small margins thanks to voting machine chicanery engineered by Republican officials in control of the voting process. <br /><br />See "<b><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kph22d1a0i4" target="_blank">With Trump’s Margins of Victory Shrinking, Lawsuits Filed to Block Recount in Two States</a></b>," The Real News Network, December 2, 2016. All the details of the GOP (Gang Of Plunderers) election thefts in those three states are explained.<br /><br /><br /><b>1] </b> Actually there are even <i>more </i>defendants in the 66-page complaint - Roger Stone, former campaign worker George Papadopoulos, former campaign associate Rick Gates, "John Does 1-10," and more are named as part of what was apparently a vast conspiracy against the poor innocent Democrats. <br /><br />The suit claims the defendants are guilty of violating numerous laws- everything from conspiracy to violations of federal copyright laws and the Trade Secrets Act. And of COURSE the Democrats are suing for millions of dollars in "damages." Hey, it wouldn't be the Democratic Party if they weren't angling for money!<br /><br /><br /><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Ge0EINkPL6M/Wt4xcJjvIOI/AAAAAAAABBs/AWvCN0UIrXw8c2mEjuM0wkXjjJbVVsDQgCLcBGAs/s1600/Tom%2BPerez%252C%2BObama%2BClinton%2Bpuppet.jpeg"><img border="0" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Ge0EINkPL6M/Wt4xcJjvIOI/AAAAAAAABBs/AWvCN0UIrXw8c2mEjuM0wkXjjJbVVsDQgCLcBGAs/s640/Tom%2BPerez%252C%2BObama%2BClinton%2Bpuppet.jpeg" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Tom Perez, Obama-Clinton Puppet &amp; Stooge, Tool of Corporate Rule</b></span></div><br /> <br /> <br /><br /><br /><br /> </div>Jason Zenithhttps://plus.google.com/118413632629344209658noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13674306.post-81308256966997719002018-04-21T16:46:00.001-04:002018-04-21T16:46:37.151-04:00Apotheosization of Barbara Bush, Grande Dame of Ruling Class Crime Clan, In Full Swing<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">We're being told by the U.S. corporate propaganda system that we all loved Barbara Bush, who was some sort of kind-hearted yet iron-willed lady who loved children. It's garbage, of course. She was partners with a major criminal of the 20th century, her husband, George Herbert Walker Bush.<br /><br />Just turning on the radio, I was subjected to career propagandist Susan Page pushing the mythology that Bush was "America's Grandmother" who "loved children." Those are two of the ubiquitous propaganda lines the huge U.S. corporate propaganda system is assiduously shoveling down our throats. (Apparently Queen Mother Bush didn't care for Guatemalan, Salvadorean, Honduran, Panamanian, or Palestinian children, among others.) She's getting the full media sendoff, as the U.S. corporate propaganda system once again acts EXACTLY like state media.<br /><br />Naturally, the BBC, always reliably sycophantic to U.S. imperialism, is parroting the U.S. propaganda lines about the U.S.' Queen Mother. (Who knew this was really an aristocracy?)<br /><br />Marx thought that the bourgeoisie had overthrown the aristocracy. If they did, it was only to become a new aristocracy.<br /><br /><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-62AwwR7O0VM/WtuiWnd85NI/AAAAAAAABBc/UA4U4XmtfD4_qbcMJd9yPOxP3j3aPLh3ACLcBGAs/s1600/Barbara%2BBush%2Bcommemorated%2Bon%2BGoogle%2Bsearch%2Bpage%2B4.21.18.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="417" data-original-width="775" height="344" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-62AwwR7O0VM/WtuiWnd85NI/AAAAAAAABBc/UA4U4XmtfD4_qbcMJd9yPOxP3j3aPLh3ACLcBGAs/s640/Barbara%2BBush%2Bcommemorated%2Bon%2BGoogle%2Bsearch%2Bpage%2B4.21.18.png" width="640" /></a><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Google, partner in mass surveillance with the NSA, does its bit</b></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><b>&nbsp;to make us bow our heads in memory of the old battle-axe.</b></span><br /><br /><br /></div>Jason Zenithhttps://plus.google.com/118413632629344209658noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13674306.post-10082408442440143842018-04-18T18:50:00.002-04:002018-04-18T18:50:38.613-04:00Queen Mother Barbara Bush Dies- "Free" Press Acts Just Like State Media<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">She was 92, with an iron will, and up to her eyeballs in Bush clan criminality. Her husband is a known sex offender who gropes women. But that's the least of his crimes.<br /><br />The Bushes are part of the contemporary U.S. aristocracy, permanent fixtures of a ruling political elite. This is treated as a natural state of affairs in a nation whose propagandists and politicians can't stop for one second yammering about "Our Democracy," as if such a thing exists. It exists if you apply an Orwellian definition to "democracy," meaning <b>oligarchy</b>.<br /><br />U.S. and even foreign media is acting as if a Queen has died. They are trying to create the impression that she was a popular figure. I rather doubt most Americans ever gave much thought to Barbara Bush. She operated behind the scenes.<br /><br />Here's some sample rhetoric from the CBS propaganda network:&nbsp; She was "as real as it gets," she was "compassionate," and charitable, she cared about "literacy."&nbsp; No wonder that, according to CBS, "tributes are pouring in" for Mamma Bear Bush. (Actually her kind are dedicated to political and historical <b><i>il</i></b>literacy for the people.)<br /><br />I didn't see her alleged "compassion" on display when her husband was slaughtering 4,000 poor Panamanians. Or when her son caused the deaths of a million Iraqis. Or when her husband, as Reagan's vice-president, had blood up to his elbows helping to surreptitiously fund the terrorists commiting atrocities in Nicaragua from their CIA bases in Honduras and Costa Rica, or supporting the fascist death squad regime of El Salvador. Numerous other examples could be cited.<br /><br />The Bush clan supported the Third Reich financially. That's some history that the U.S. establishment has consigned to oblivion. (This is copiously documented in books and videos.)<br /><br />And then there is the 9/11 conspiracy which the Bush crime family and their Saudi friends wrapped around the Al-Qaeda conspiracy, to allow planes to be flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan, a cover for the demolition of those towers, along with a third building, 7 World Trade Center (another real world event consigned to the bourgeoisie's memory hole) by nanothermite explosives, also proven beyond doubt by physical evidence. (Just go to youtube.com and search "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YW6mJOqRDI4" target="_blank"><b>Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth</b></a>" and educate yourself. Or go to their website, <a href="https://www.ae911truth.org/" target="_blank"><b>https://www.ae911truth.org/</b></a>)<br /><br /><br /><br />Would the U.S. media be any more uniform if it was all government controlled? It couldn't be more unanimous in its fawning eulogizing for the nasty Bush matriarch.&nbsp; Put another way, at such times, which come all too often, there is no functional difference between the corporate media and the state media of North Korea, or Iran, or Saudi Arabia. (The beating of the war drums to agitate the populace to support the invasion of Iraq in 2003, or the war on Vietnam in 1964 with the fictitious attack on U.S. warships in the Gulf of Tonkin, or the war drive in 1917, are particularly pernicious examples of this phenomenon of the privately-owned media acting exactly like government organs.)<br /><br />Also, in their typical slavish fashion, those reliable sycophants to U.S. imperialism at the BBC also gushed a bunch of guff about the American Queen Mother. Imperialist shills at the BBC intoned: "We'll remember Barbara Bush, wife and mother to two U.S. presidents," "who won the hearts of Americans with her self-deprecating wit, determination, and" blah blah blah.&nbsp; Self-deprecating wit? Won the hearts of Americans? What bosh, as they'd say in Britain, if they were honest.<br /><br /><br /><br /></div>Jason Zenithhttps://plus.google.com/118413632629344209658noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13674306.post-89303012881466536412018-04-11T18:46:00.000-04:002018-04-11T18:46:07.559-04:00Facebook Boss Mark Zuckerberg Spends 5 Hours Being Disingenuous & Evasive Before Congress<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">"Maybe" was his favorite answer to hard questions. Like, Should Facebook be regulated.<br /><br />As to why Facebook didn't tell their users about their personal data being surreptitiously used by Cambridge Analytica to help Trump for TWO YEARS, he said, disingenuously, that looking back it was a mistake not to. Translation: If he had known it would eventually explode into a PUBLIC SCANDAL, he wouldn't have hidden it from people all this time.<br /><br />Tech nerds need to invent a crystal ball to see into the future. Just doing what is ethically right is impossible for them.<br /><br />People have pointed out that for 14 years, Zuckerberg has run the same shtick of "apologizing" and promising to do better on those occasions when he's caught out doing something scummy. He's basically a calculating hustler weasel. His "apologies" are as sincere as all the establishment blather about "democracy" and "rights." It's just gaslighting, brainwashing people.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-hr6a-DmRZoY/Ws6PhkA32HI/AAAAAAAABBI/B2p4RJFKhE8iJzHypFqOh7l-BzMSlxDXwCEwYBhgL/s1600/zuckerberg.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="673" data-original-width="627" height="640" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-hr6a-DmRZoY/Ws6PhkA32HI/AAAAAAAABBI/B2p4RJFKhE8iJzHypFqOh7l-BzMSlxDXwCEwYBhgL/s640/zuckerberg.jpeg" width="596" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>Smarm, Defined.</b></span></div><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>Jason Zenithhttps://plus.google.com/118413632629344209658noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13674306.post-86511892278322207302018-04-06T16:08:00.000-04:002018-04-06T16:09:13.961-04:00Trump's Attack on Sex<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">How's this for irony? A known sex assaulter is making it harder for people to access birth control. His regime has issued rules allowing even more religious zealots to refuse to pay for health insurance that covers contraception. (Apparently his regime's deregulation mania is selective.)&nbsp;This is piled on top of the GOP-controlled Supreme Court decision in the Hobby Lobby case to allow companies owned by religious fanatics to deny contraception coverage to their employees in company medical insurance plans. Trump has gone even farther, causing regulations to be issued allowing company bosses with "moral" objections to birth control to exclude contraception reimbursements from company health plans.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Sick</b>.</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-kwGmbjEyrR4/WsfSHaqPcQI/AAAAAAAABAs/boigJxpo30gTImbiImBmaRgddkW8GICXQCLcBGAs/s1600/Trump%2Bvlcsnap-9380-03-24-23h56m10s645.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="360" data-original-width="640" height="360" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-kwGmbjEyrR4/WsfSHaqPcQI/AAAAAAAABAs/boigJxpo30gTImbiImBmaRgddkW8GICXQCLcBGAs/s640/Trump%2Bvlcsnap-9380-03-24-23h56m10s645.png" width="640" /></a></div><b style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Hey! You don't need birth control if I'm only grabbing&nbsp;</span></b><br /><b style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;your&nbsp;</span></b><b style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">pussy! Believe me!</span></b><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lBbhyqwtbec/WsfTUpE_V2I/AAAAAAAABA4/FCXfUdBfVXYi0TZcQfYGnKLcw2xCsJOxwCLcBGAs/s1600/Donald_Trump_Middlefinger.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="575" data-original-width="574" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lBbhyqwtbec/WsfTUpE_V2I/AAAAAAAABA4/FCXfUdBfVXYi0TZcQfYGnKLcw2xCsJOxwCLcBGAs/s640/Donald_Trump_Middlefinger.jpg" width="638" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">Fuck You, Feminists!</span></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></div></div>Jason Zenithhttps://plus.google.com/118413632629344209658noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13674306.post-45349823107466397892018-04-06T15:45:00.000-04:002018-04-06T15:45:24.841-04:00Good News About Trump: Foreign View of U.S. Now More Realistic<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">A recent Pew poll of citizens of non-U.S.nations finds a precipitous decline in the "favorable" view of the U.S. under president Donald "Huge Narcissist" Trump. Only about a quarter of people polled outside the U.S. have a "favorable" opinion of the U.S. under Trump.<br /><br />This is good news. Under Obama, millions, maybe billions, of credulous idiots around the world were taken in by the clever, dangerous con man Barack "The Drone Assassin" Obama and had a "favorable" view of the violently imperialist, destructive U.S. The Trump results contrast with an unbelievable 60% who thought well of the U.S. during the Obama regime. Europeans in particular are stubborn fans of the criminal Obama, a sneaky, evil man who greatly strengthened the secret police state here, among numerous other crimes against humanity. He was also a brutal repressor of dissent, which is of a piece with perfecting a secret police state.<br /><br />Of course, since the U.S. is mostly (but not entirely) a force for evil in the world, it is more realistic to have an "unfavorable" view of the U.S. Unfortunately international public opinion is totally subjective and swings like a weathervane according to the subjective impression of the likeability of whoever happens to be the Chief Imperialist of the U.S. at the moment.<br /><br />Going against the trend, Russians had a more favorable opinion of the U.S. under Trump. This has yet to be justified by real changes in U.S. policy towards Russia. Trump has not eased sanctions against Russia, imposed to punish Russia for daring to resist the U.S.-bloc's political annexation of Ukraine. In Syria there is real conflict between the U.S. and Russia, with Russia supporting the murderous Assad regime with combat aircraft, and the U.S. fighting ISIS and other Islamist groups (while assiduous avoiding fighting the Assad regime). The U.S. just shot down an Assad regime warplane that was attacking or threatening U.S.-allied forces and their U.S. helpers on the ground. Russia responded by announcing that henceforth U.S. planes over Syria would be "targets." (An ambiguous term which implies they might be fired upon.) And Russia has ended communications with the U.S. military over Syria, which had been used to avoid aerial conflict by the two nations' warplanes over Syria as they bomb their chosen targets- the Russians to help Assad, the U.S. targeting ISIS etc. However, Trump conspicuously did not carry on the hostile anti-Russian tone of the Obama regime. Trump's reluctance to get with the anti-Russian program of U.S. elites is the main reason he is under relentless attack by an unholy alliance of the Democratic, Party, the corporate media, and the main secret police agencies (FBI, CIA, NSA).<br /><br />The BBC also just announced the results of their own poll of 36,000 people in various countries. Only a third thought the U.S. was a force for good. (Amazing that a third of the world's people STILL don't get it!) Canada came out on tops as a Good Guy nation. Britain ranked down with the U.S. That should be no surprise, since the British ruling class has tied their nation tightly to the U.S. ever since World War II, like Odysseus bound to the mast of his ship to enjoy the sweet singing of the Sirens without hurling himself to his own doomed, lured by their irresistible voices. The British similarly were lured by the self-deception that the U.S. would serve their imperialist interests, and not vice versa as it turned out. Their innate snobbery caused them to underestimate the savvy of the American imperialists.<br /><br />Now Israel, on the other hand, has the U.S. wrapped around its little finger! And that's almost entirely down to the power of organized Jews in the U.S. The Anglophile WASP elite of the U.S. didn't deliver for "Great" Britain what some Jews in the U.S. have done!<br /><br />An oddity of history: a small nation dominating a much larger, much more powerful one. May be unique in the annals of nations.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><div><br /></div></div>Jason Zenithhttps://plus.google.com/118413632629344209658noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13674306.post-78477305766646694762018-04-06T15:40:00.001-04:002018-04-06T15:40:36.158-04:00Favorite Targets the BBC Loves To Bash (Under the Cover of "Journalism")<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">After several years of monitoring the British government's global propaganda arm, the BBC (British Broadcasting Government), what leaps out at me are the following objects of hate at the BBC:<br /><br />-The Venezuelan government, headed by Nicolas Maduro<br /><br />-The Colombian rebel movement FARC<br /><br />-The defunct secret police agency the STASI of the defunct nation East Germany (they just bashed this one again September 14)<br /><br />-The defunct Soviet Union<br /><br />-Russia<br /><br />-Vladimir Putin<br /><br />Now by "bashing" I mean gratuitous stories that are slanted and grossly unbalanced.<br /><br />For example, in attacking the Venezuelan govenment, they never give the government's viewpoint, nor that of the millions of Venezuelans who support it. You ONLY hear those Venezuelans attacking the regime, and the foreign governments trying to overthrow it (namely the U.S.). Even worse, while constantly portraying the Maduro government as violently repressive, they have completely hidden the facts that the so-called "protesters" are in fact violent thugs who set fires, attack motor vehicles, burn cliinics, murder policemen, and have burned alive dark-skinned poor people who the "protesters" presume are Chavistas, based on their pigmentation and economic class. But that's not bad enough for the smarmy and dishonest propagandists at the BBC. They cynically add in the people, including police, murdered by the thugs the BBC portrays as brave oppressed people fighting for democracy, with the street goons who get themselves killed while committing felonies in the streets, in one total, which they mislead listeners and viewers into believing&nbsp;<b>are all victims of&nbsp;</b>g<b>overnment violence</b>.&nbsp; They talk about "protesters," then give a number of people killed to date,&nbsp;<b>sneakily aggregating deaths on both sides without telling you</b>.<br /><br />NPR, a U.S.-government domestic propaganda network, is the same as the BBC in regards to how it "covers" Venezuela.<br /><br />You don't have to be a supporter of the Maduro regime- I'm not- to see that this vulgar propaganda is merely a political operation to prepare public opinion in the U.S., UK, and wherever in the world people are stuck relying on the BBC for their "news," for the overthrow of the "evil" and "repressive" Venezuelan government, in the name of "restoring democracy."<br /><br />Yeah, the U.S. and UK are so in love with democracy that both are shoveling armaments in the Saudi Arabian regime''s hungry maw as fast as they can. Saudi Arabia, one of the two most repressive countries on earth (North Korea is the other) is using those weapons to destroy Yemen. They are butchering its people, starving them with a naval blockade, and causing an uncontrolled cholera epidemic which has sickened over 600,000 Yemenis and killed several thousand already. All to try to put in power a so-called "president" who has so little indigenous support that like the South Vietnamese generals who ruled that ersatz country, are totally reliant on foreign military power to try and subjugate the populace. (One group, the Houthis, were able to put the fake Yemeni government to flight in Saudi Arabia.)<br /><br />Western guff about "human rights" and "democracy," SOO cynically dishonest, has done much to discredit those essential concepts. Just as the Soviet Union, Maoist China, and going down the scale of degeneration, the likes of Pol Pot in Cambodia (or "Kampuchia" as it was styled when his psychopaths, the Khmer Rouge, ruled it) and Robert Mugabe in Ziimbabwe and others, have discredited and destroyed the very words "communism" and "socialism" with their cynical misappropriation of those terms for their own base power manias, so are human rights and democracy being delegitimized by the scumbag imperialists of "the West."<br /><br />The BBC (and the entirety of Western power-establishment media) has been so grossly twisted on the question of Ukraine, and Crimea, that it merits a separate essay. Just coincidentally, an example of deranged BBC distortion of reality occurs as I write this. According to the BBC, Russia is now holding military exercises "close to NATO's frontier." In other phrasing, they "report" breathlessly "Russian military operations near NATO's border- is it cause for alarm." That is to say, inside Russia on Russia's own border. It just so happens that NATO has pushed itself RIGHT UP TO THE RUSSIAN BORDER. So now if Russia stations its OWN MILITARY INSIDE ITS OWN BORDERS, that is deemed to be a "Threat" to NATO! Amazing.<br /><br />I don't like Russia, and Putin is a sinister autocrat. But I don't throw objectivity and reason out the window because of it.<br /><br />But then, I'm not a propagandist.<br /><br /><br /><br /></div>Jason Zenithhttps://plus.google.com/118413632629344209658noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13674306.post-29153748611094427612018-04-06T15:26:00.000-04:002018-04-06T15:26:34.862-04:00In Surprise Upset, Egyptian Military Dictator Wins 97% of "Vote" In "Presidential Election"<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Barely a peep out of U.S. establishment media about it. Which provides a stark and very politically revealing contrast with how they went on and on about the "so-called election" of Putin, just concluded. Putin ran against 7 opponents, and received 76% of the vote.&nbsp; Sisi imprisoned and intimidated all of his opponents, and ran against a ringer who said he was supporting Sisi!<br /><br />It's true that there were reports of ballot box stuffing in Russia. And the West's choice for Russian president, Viktor Navalny, was barred from voting. However there is no reason to doubt that Putin would have won in a fair election against Navalny, if by a less impressive margin.<br /><br />Western media gave Putin another demerit for the "low" turnout of 64% in Russia. (It was only 40% in Egypt- of course that was lightly skated over.) I suppose the media hacks forgot that turnout in U.S. presidential elections is only 54-55%!<br /><br />The elephant in the room here is how U.S. media barely mentioned the Egyptian pseudo-election, and the ongoing, horrible repression in Egypt. It is another example of the blatant, hypocritical, double standards Western media apply. The lack of objectivity is what distinguishes journalism from propaganda.<br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div></div>Jason Zenithhttps://plus.google.com/118413632629344209658noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13674306.post-87125902593054284362018-04-04T12:52:00.000-04:002018-04-04T12:52:49.288-04:00Martin Luther King, Jr. Dishonored on 50th Anniversary of His Murder<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">It shows contempt for King that his murderers are being protected, 50 years after they assassinated him. They are being protected by everyone who refuses to <i><b>name </b></i>them!<br /><br />That, unfortunately and shamefully, includes allegedly "alternative," "progressive" media such as <i>Mother Jones</i>, <i>Democracy Now!</i>, and others. (<i>The Nation</i>, another CIA accomplice, doesn't fall into that category as it is Establishment media, the leftward-most edge of the U.S. propaganda system which has always conformed to official lies about U.S. assassinations.)<br /><br />The murderers are well known, and ample evidence established their guilt long ago.<br /><br />They are the CIA, the Memphis Police, and the FBI, whose main role, as in all major U.S. domestic political assassinations, was to do a sham "investigation" framing up the designated fall guy, who is always the same guy, the Lone Assassin.<br />&nbsp;&nbsp; <br />The U.S.-government radio propaganda network, NPR (National Public Radio), asserted once again on its "news" show this morning that King was assassinated by James Earl Ray, the designated fall guy. This is easily disproved. Not just by the fact that Ray was no marksman, but by such facts that the CIA procured false identity papers for Ray in the names of four Canadian men who physically resembled him. The CIA's resident agent in Canada admitted after his retirement that he had obtained these documents prior to the assassination on orders from his superiors. (As I recall, this was reported in <i>Rolling Stone</i> magazine. Down the memory hole now!) <br /><br />Amy Goodman, the head of the <i>Democracy Now!</i> TV/radio program, speaks in incomplete sentences every time she mentions King's murder. She repeatedly mentions he was assassinated, but never says "by the CIA." She doesn't say <i>who </i>murdered him. She is being coy. She doesn't intone the Official Lie that James Earl Ray, the designated fall guy, did it. That would indicate she knows that isn't true. But she just leaves a blank. History is not blank here!<br /><br />Of course, the corporate media is even worse. Goodman and others at least perform the service of retelling King's opposition to the Vietnam War (which arguably is what got him killed) and his solidarity with oppressed workers, specifically the striking, horribly abused black sanitation workers of Memphis, Tennessee, where the hit was performed. <br /><br />How about respecting King enough to stop protecting his murderers? And drop the phony cant about "honoring" him!<br /><br /><br />See also “<a href="https://jasonzenith.blogspot.com/2015/01/remembering-martin-luther-king-jr-while.html" target="_blank"><b>'Remembering' Martin Luther King, Jr., While Forgetting Who Murdered Him</b></a>," January 19th, 2015.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>Jason Zenithhttps://plus.google.com/118413632629344209658noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13674306.post-56108010455382607142018-03-20T16:21:00.000-04:002018-03-20T16:21:14.896-04:00Former FBI Secret Police Chief Robert Mueller Starting To Root Around In Trump's Closet Full of Skeletons<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">With Mueller's subpoenaing of the business records of Trump's business enterprises, it becomes obvious that the plot to bring down Trump doesn't hinge on "Russian collusion." Rather, as with the criminal charges brought against Paul Manafort and Rick Gates, Mueller combs through the past history of Trump to find any indictable offense.The crimes alleged against Manafort and Gates have nothing to do with the Trump campaign at all. Other idiots have stupidly lied to the FBI and become pawns to Mueller as a result, at his mercy. Even a lawyer did this! (Don't people know by now NEVER to talk to the FBI?)<br /><br />The Hate Trump bloc of politicians and media keep asserting that Trump must have colluded with Russia, because he acts like he has something to hide. But they are so stupid they can't see that Trump indeed has a huge number of things to hide- based on his lifetime of getting away with breaking the rules. It has nothing to do with Russian "meddling in our election" and "hacking our democracy," blah blah blah.<br /><br />The same thing happened with Kenneth Starr's attacks on Bill Clinton. Starr was supposedly investigating Whitewater real estate deals from years ago in Arkansas. Ultimately he used the Paula Jones sex harassment civil suit as an entry point to accusing Clinton of impeachable offenses derived from Clinton's attempt to hide his sexual affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Kenneth Starr's true political remit was to get Clinton by hook or by crook. Mueller's true mission is to take down Trump in any way he can.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hYwpjCneRP0/WrFs5ejFB7I/AAAAAAAABAY/SF5eHDHfhI4_Qu4XvcI-UP36meSAd5xtgCLcBGAs/s1600/robert-mueller.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="570" data-original-width="854" height="426" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hYwpjCneRP0/WrFs5ejFB7I/AAAAAAAABAY/SF5eHDHfhI4_Qu4XvcI-UP36meSAd5xtgCLcBGAs/s640/robert-mueller.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Do you <i>really </i>trust this guy?</span></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">&nbsp;</span></b></div></div>Jason Zenithhttps://plus.google.com/118413632629344209658noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13674306.post-50095883356608696022018-03-17T16:34:00.000-04:002018-03-17T16:34:20.329-04:00Notorious Cokehead Becomes Chief Economic Advisor to President of the U.S.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Larry Kudlow, a right-wing TV talking head who once had a $100,000 a month cocaine habit, which he funded by a grossly-overpaid Wall Street position, has been tapped by Donald "Jackass" Trump to be chief economic advisor, replacing Gary Cohn, who came from Goldman Sachs and left in a snit over Trump's imposition of import tariffs on steel and aluminum. Kudlow is known for making wrng predictions- a perfect fit for the fantasist regime of Trump.<br /><br />Cohn and Kudlow both live charmed lives as made members of the capitalist nomenklatura. No long prison terms for consuming large amounts of cocaine for their ilk. No career ruination either. Kudlow still makes big bucks making bad predictions on television. Cohn will return to Goldman Sachs, which has salted the top level of the Federal government with its operatives going back several presidents.<br /><br />We live under the corrupt rule of a rapacious class.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-dM4OLP0Cm-U/Wq16_VnRBKI/AAAAAAAABAI/VGYV36vgohw5IlmT6s8OuD6ycjRMav18ACLcBGAs/s1600/larry%2Bkudlow.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="410" data-original-width="618" height="424" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-dM4OLP0Cm-U/Wq16_VnRBKI/AAAAAAAABAI/VGYV36vgohw5IlmT6s8OuD6ycjRMav18ACLcBGAs/s640/larry%2Bkudlow.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">I'm sharp as a tack! On the ball! Yessir!</span></b></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>Jason Zenithhttps://plus.google.com/118413632629344209658noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13674306.post-24933951565467228282018-03-08T14:29:00.001-05:002018-03-08T14:29:15.174-05:00THE ART OF EXTORTION- AKA "THE DEAL"<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Trump announced stiff tariffs on imported steel and aluminum. Aside from the fact that this is a terrible idea economically (but sounds good to the ignorant rubes who voted for him) it turns out that one of Trump's intentions is to use it to twist the arms of Canada and Mexico to stop being "so unfair" to the U.S. and knuckle under to a renegotiation of NAFTA on terms onerous to them. Trump announced his extortion demand via tweet and speaking to reporters.<br /><br />“NAFTA, which is under renegotiation right now, has been a bad deal for U.S.A. Massive relocation of companies &amp; jobs,” Trump proclaimed in a tweet March 5th. “Tariffs on Steel and Aluminum will only come off if new &amp; fair NAFTA agreement is signed.”<br /><br />Later, Trump, told reporters that he had spoken by phone with U.S. negotiators at the NAFTA "renegotiation" talks in Mexico City with Canada and Mexico. “But if they are not going to make a NAFTA deal, we’re just going to leave it this way,” Trump said at a news conference in Washington, holding the tariffs over the heads of those two nations as a club to bludgeon them into submission.<br /><br />[NAFTA stands for North American Free Trade Agreement. "Free trade" is euphemism for big corporate economic hegemony. The horrible president Bill Clinton created NAFTA with Canada and Mexico, two weak nations to the north and south of the U.S. that are under heavy U.S. domination.]<br /><br /><br /><br /></div>Jason Zenithhttps://plus.google.com/118413632629344209658noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13674306.post-40741151686289378212018-02-24T16:50:00.001-05:002018-03-10T14:17:47.020-05:00Four Cops Cowered While Florida Gunman Slaughtered 17 in School- The Trump NRA Solution<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Their solution? Give the teachers guns! Pistol-packin' Mamas will solve the problem!<br /><br />The Sheriff's deputy assigned to "protect" the school, where he'd been posted for eight years, and was deemed a "Deputy of the Year," he didn't want to risk his skin by going inside. And three of his colleagues hid outside behind their car doors with their guns drawn.<br /><br />If fucking COPS cower in fear outside while a single malcontent murders people, how is arming teachers going to produce a better result?<br /><br />So useless sheriff's deputies let a gunman kill 17 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Trump and the NRA think armed teachers can do a better job.<br /><br />I guess if the teacher is cornered, and has a gun, at least there's a chance of the gunman being shot. We sure can't count on police. That's been shown repeatedly.<br /><br />It was shown in a previous Florida massacre, at a gay nightclub, when cops hung back for hours.<br /><br />It happened at the high school in Columbine, Colorado, when the cops played it safe.<br /><br />You see, the vast majority of cops are no "heroes." They fall into two categories: time fillers who are in it for the money and the fat pension and medical insurance benefits denied to other workers (and increasingly denied to teachers), and bullies, thugs and sadists who are on a power trip. (Many of these are also racists.) <br /><br />Teachers have been under a multi-year attack by the rulers in this country. There is an ongoing, systematic attempt to destroy their unions, obviously to attack their standard of living. This happened in Wisconsin under the Koch Brothers' puppet Governor Scott Walker, and other places. At this very moment teachers in West Virginia are striking over their abysmal pay (48th in the nation) and being gouged on their health insurance. The "charter schools" movement is a plot by billionaire hedge fund managers and their political stooges (like Arne Duncan and Barack Obama) and profiteers to deunionize teachers.<br /><br />Teachers are scapegoated for the social pathologies of racism and institutional poverty. It takes a lot of GALL for the same political bosses who have been waging war on teachers to now demand that they function as armed bodyguards for their pupils and lay their lives on the line- something the Sheriff's Deputies in Broward County just conspicuously refused to do, as have police in numerous other instances.<br /><br />Oh, and the "world's premiere law enforcement agency," the one the Democrats and the establishment propaganda system puts on a pedestal and insists everyone must genuflect before, and none dare speak an unkind word about- yes, that one, the secret police agency FBI. Their "tip line" blew off a specific warning that the killer, an emotionally disturbed 19-year-old, was dangerous and might ATTACK A SCHOOL. The FBI call center didn't bother passing that tip along. Because it wasn't about Islamic terrorism or some leftists making trouble for the system.<br /><br />Okay, some police act like actual police. They are a minority.<br /><br />But while teachers' wages and benefits are under relentless assault, cops are sitting pretty. The attack on public sector unions in Wisconsin exempted the police and fire unions. And cops generally are a labor aristocracy. In New York City, they make mid to high-five figure salaries, get a sweetheart deal on health insurance, and only have to work 20 years to get a full pension and lifetime health insurance. If they work fewer years, they still get partial benefits. And their pension is based on the last year of salary, so traditionally they pile on overtime to "earn" a six-figure salary that last year.<br /><br />Some jurisdictions are even more lucrative for the enforcers of social order and protectors of the power structure, some less.<br /><br />Florida, that day,&nbsp; taking a bullet to shield his students.<br /><br /><br />What should be the lesson for would-be revolutionaries in this? It is that cops won't risk their lives. If there is ever a serious armed uprising in the U.S., expect the cops to mostly run away. These incidents reveal a weakness under the surface of the repressive U.S. apparatus. (Of course there are that minority of killers and fanatics and SWAT team thugs, who have been armed with fully automatic weapons and sniper rifles and even silencers by the Obama regime.)<br /><br /><br />In the past, riots by unarmed blacks were violently suppressed by white police, sheriffs, National Guardsmen, and even U.S. Army units. The situation could be very different in the future, with these repressive formations frequently racially "integrated" now, and a general sense of cynicism among those who serve a system that is corrupt. As at the end of the Soviet Union, when no one believed the propaganda slogans anymore, naive belief in the empty bellowing about "freedom and democracy" is on the wane. <br /><br /><br />Of course any revolution is as likely to be from the hard right as from the left. The right has guns, after all, and is treated with kid gloves by the system. The left is unarmed and subject to vicious repression, as what happened to the oil pipeline protesters at Standing Rock, in North Dakota, illustrated, and the ongoing persecution of Trump inauguration protesters by the Federal government in Washington, D.C.<br /><br /><br /><br /></div>Jason Zenithhttps://plus.google.com/118413632629344209658noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13674306.post-49437341813053149282018-01-21T15:50:00.001-05:002018-01-24T16:30:48.689-05:00The Credo Of Donald J. Trump<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Being the True Credo of Donald J. "Jackass" Trump</b></span>:</div><div style="text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-as5gld7aoZk/Wmj6ZJQfmmI/AAAAAAAAA_Y/EUFeQG5E9_A_4C6zLV0PErIDxbH-CGMEwCLcBGAs/s1600/Credo%2Bof%2BDonald%2BJ.%2BTrump%2B%2Bvlcsnap-4369-07-10-11h28m35s906.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="256" data-original-width="320" height="512" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-as5gld7aoZk/Wmj6ZJQfmmI/AAAAAAAAA_Y/EUFeQG5E9_A_4C6zLV0PErIDxbH-CGMEwCLcBGAs/s640/Credo%2Bof%2BDonald%2BJ.%2BTrump%2B%2Bvlcsnap-4369-07-10-11h28m35s906.png" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-KwI1Kw0YqZk/Wmj6nt8UyqI/AAAAAAAAA_c/fpBqW_hHhX4KGW9ucAXI-JPsNYmdAQgigCLcBGAs/s1600/credo%2Bof%2Bdonald%2Bj.%2Btrump%2B%2Bvlcsnap-5060-07-01-05h42m33s047.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="256" data-original-width="320" height="512" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-KwI1Kw0YqZk/Wmj6nt8UyqI/AAAAAAAAA_c/fpBqW_hHhX4KGW9ucAXI-JPsNYmdAQgigCLcBGAs/s640/credo%2Bof%2Bdonald%2Bj.%2Btrump%2B%2Bvlcsnap-5060-07-01-05h42m33s047.png" width="640" /></a></div><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-NmGUHRHm7wU/Wmj6tHJK8II/AAAAAAAAA_g/2kxrEjcEjKYZJlTlUFiGM_Ifb16MZnOeQCLcBGAs/s1600/Credo%2Bof%2BDonald%2BJ.%2BTrump%2B%2Bvlcsnap-7596-11-10-03h12m57s876.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="256" data-original-width="320" height="512" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-NmGUHRHm7wU/Wmj6tHJK8II/AAAAAAAAA_g/2kxrEjcEjKYZJlTlUFiGM_Ifb16MZnOeQCLcBGAs/s640/Credo%2Bof%2BDonald%2BJ.%2BTrump%2B%2Bvlcsnap-7596-11-10-03h12m57s876.png" width="640" /></a></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">Lyrics from <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOuFwdLUG_A&amp;feature=youtu.be" target="_blank"><b>"Cult of Personality" by Living Colour.</b></a></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>&nbsp; </b></span></div><br /><br /></div>Jason Zenithhttps://plus.google.com/118413632629344209658noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13674306.post-51557351208182002242018-01-19T16:51:00.001-05:002018-01-19T16:51:41.943-05:00The Biggest Flip-Flopper: Donald J(ackass) Trump<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">A common political epithet in the United States is "flip-flopper." This is considered a devastating characteristic, denoting indecisiveness and weakness. (And of course "weak" and "indecisive" leaders are assumed <i>a priori</i> to be BAD leaders.)<br /><br />So here's a trick Trump's Establishment enemies have missed: tagging Trump with the "flip-flopper" label. He's certainly provided loads of soundbites they could use to devastating effect to "brand" him that way.<br /><br />Just on the issue of DACA, how many times has Trump seemed to change his mind by saying different and contradictory things?<b> [1]</b><br /><br />But instead of pasting a Trump-style sobriquet to Trump's forehead, like "<b>Flip-Flop Donald</b>," the bourgeois yakkers of the Establishment media persist in trying to <u><i>figure out </i></u>what Trump "really means" or "really wants" or what his "actual position is." And the bourgeois politicians of the Democratic Party keep trying to "negotiate" with Trump and get him to "clarify his position."<br /><br />What fools. Perfect foils for the inveterate con man Trump. A standard m.o. (<i>modus operandi</i>) of con men is confusing their marks, keeping them psychologically off-balance, the better to manipulate them, to buffalo them into the traps the con man sets.<br /><br />Trump doesn't <i>have </i>positions. He's a fast-talking but very predictable con man who uses verbiage as a weapon, pure and simple. What he "wants" at any given moment is what he senses will produce an advantage for himself. If tomorrow the racists and xenophobes and fanatical nationalists of America lost interest in "the wall," so would Trump. His "positions" change from day to day, or even from sentence to sentence because he is winging it. He's a creature of almost pure instinct. So trying to figure out his calculations is a fool's errand because he does very little calculating. <br /><br />Why would a person who calculates have the assistant Attorney General take credit for firing the FBI Director, have the story put out that it was because Comey was unfair to Hillary Clinton (!) and then go bragging to the Russian Foreign Minister and the Russian Ambassador to the U.S. how he fired Comey to get the "Russian meddling" investigation off his back, AND tell a TV interviewer the same? For that matter, why would a guy whom the Democratic Party and much of the Establishment media was branding a Russian stooge or colluder or puppet for months, even MEET with Russian officials if he was doing <i><b>any </b></i>kind of logical thinking that can be called "calculating"?<br /><br />Furthermore, there are plenty of other examples of Trump's irrationality.<br /><br />Trump is very easy to figure out. He is a narcissist, an egomaniac, a con man, a rip-off artist, a braggart, and a real estate hustler.<br /><br />And lest the media make us forget, a racist. <br /><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-VG9MZyMtNf0/WmJmSl9jyFI/AAAAAAAAA-s/dYAyXFNWpx0JAsKcNtN8jvsqJEykF212ACLcBGAs/s1600/5.15.17_Trump_Lavrov_Kislyak.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="540" data-original-width="960" height="360" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-VG9MZyMtNf0/WmJmSl9jyFI/AAAAAAAAA-s/dYAyXFNWpx0JAsKcNtN8jvsqJEykF212ACLcBGAs/s640/5.15.17_Trump_Lavrov_Kislyak.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Trump reporting to his Russian handlers (as some would have it)&nbsp;</b></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Foreign Minister Lavrov, Ambassador to the U.S. Kislyak.<br /></b></span></div><br /><b>1]</b>&nbsp; DACA, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, is the program that Trump's predecessor, Barack "The Drone Assassin" Obama created by executive order in the last year of his eight year reign as part of his "legacy building" to be able to pose for the bourgeois version of history as a progressive. Under the program, "illegal" immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children by their parents, who have "clean" records, are temporarily exempt from deportation ("deferred action," get it? meaning they are still subject to deportation at a later date) and must either be enrolled in school or have a job. They are forced to pay a steep $495.00 registration fee every two years. They also had to expose their location: residence, phone, email, thus making later round-up easy. 780,000 young people are enrolled int he program.<br /><br />I fulminated against this program at the time Obama announced it, because I foresaw how the information the DACA-ites would be required to give up was the equivalent of Jews registering with the Nazi "authorities" and sewing Stars of David to their clothing. (And for a small percentage of deportees, death is indeed the fate they meet in their dangerous "home" countries of Mexico, Central America, Haiti, Colombia, and so on.)<br /><br />DACA-ites are referred to as "the Dreamers," a reference to "the American Dream." You see, America is, in U.S. propaganda, this paradisical land which everyone in the world aspires to live in.<br /><br />But America only looks good to the "Dreamers," with their "dream" (delusion, it is turning out) of being accepted as "Americans," in comparison to the hellish, lethal lands of their origins. Lands that are lethal in all cases in part or mostly because of the malign power of the U.S.<br /><br />To take the most obvious examples, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador are fascist death squad states where violent criminal gangs are also allowed to run rampant. This is because of a U.S. coup (Guatemala 1954), support for a coup (Honduras by Obama and his Secretary fo State, Hillary Clinton, who hadf the effrontery to boast of her crime in one of her autohagiographies) and support for fascist death squad governments (El Salvador).<br /><br />Even in Mexico, the U.S. helps prop up corrupt regimes and validates a stolen presidential "election" every six years.<br /><br />Then the U.S. has the nerve to persecute people fleeing the results of U.S. "foreign policy." And its border guards regularly murder people.<br /><br />Evil Empire.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>Jason Zenithhttps://plus.google.com/118413632629344209658noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13674306.post-19529743146674798042018-01-13T16:53:00.001-05:002018-01-13T16:53:14.801-05:00Donald Trump Treats Us To Another Dose of His Unadulterated Racism- But Not Everyone Will Acknowledge It<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Trump in the presence of seven members of Congress, while "negotiating" changes in (anti-)immigration laws, erupted that the U.S. doesn't need people from the "shithole" nations of El Salvador, Haiti, and the entire African continent. Instead he querulously demanded why the U.S. can't get more people from "countries like Norway."<br /><br />In other words, no more swarthy people, more blond-haired, blue-eyed, "white" people, similar to himself. (Although he is orange-haired, he's of German ancestry.)<br /><br />For some reason, there is a dispute over whether this naked display of racism was racist. (As if, given Trump's decades-long record of evidence of racism, there is any room for doubt at this point.)<br /><br />Rich Lowry, the editor of the neo-fascist "intellectual" rag National Review, founded by racist William F. Buckley, Jr. an opponent of civil rights laws, opined on the radio program "Left, Right and Center" that Trump merely meant the U.S. should take in people with skills, and he was just being "grumpy" when he called two nations plus an entire continent of another 54 countries shitholes. Apparently darkies have no skilled, unlike the Superior White Race.<br /><br />This was doubly odd in that National Review, and Lowry, have been anti-Trump all through his presidential campaign and through his time in office, up until now.<br />And even though there is no doubt Trump said what he said, the fact that after a long delay, he issued an ambiguous kind-of denial, has led the media to use adjectives like "alleged" and "reported," creating doubt about whether he said it! Even the UK Government propaganda network the BBC is doing this.<br /><br />Also instead of calling what he said "racist," the media is using the word "vulgar." (NPR for example, the U.S. government domestic radio propaganda network.)<br />What does the man have to do to convince the media weasels that Trump is a racist? March in a Klan rally in Klan robes?<br /><br />A brief review of Trump's decades of racism:<br /><br />Ordered his building agents not to rent to blacks.<br /><br />After the Federal government forced the Trumps (his Dad, a known Klansman, was involved in this) into a settlement agreement not to discriminate, he violated the agreement and kept on discriminating.<br />Removed "non-white" casino employees from the floor of his casino.<br /><br />Took out full-page newspaper ads calling for the death penalty for the Central Park Five, five non-white teenagers framed up by the New York City Police and Manhattan District Attorney for raping and nearly killing a white female investment banker jogger.<br /><br />Years later, after the actual culprit was definitively identified by DNA and the rapist's confession, Trump refused to accept it and fulminated against money paid by the city to settle a civil suit by the now adult men.<br /><br />His entire presidential campaign, which included branding millions of Mexican immigrants as rapists, drug dealers, and only "some, I suppose, are good people."<br /><br />His bigoted attempts to exclude virtually all Muslims from the U.S.<br /><br />And much more.<br /><br />What's even odder about the media's soft-peddling is that they seemingly want to be rid of Trump. Apparently they're reluctant to offend the millions of white racists in America.<br /><br />Fortunately there was one Democrat in the room, Senator Dick Durbin. The Republicans have been tongue-tied. Tom Cotton actually claims amnesia, saying he "doesn't remember" hearing it. You can bet Trump's remark went off like a bomb in the room. Cotton is a loathsome Senator from Arkansas, a former Army officer, rabid reactionary, and militant imperialist. And a dishonest creep who hates whistleblowers.<br /><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-f9VAnBR71JI/Wlp_oR1SxhI/AAAAAAAAA-c/g-VlZIECdn8BGV0_1Lx8v8YKERny5klUQCLcBGAs/s1600/05.16.17-Donald-Trump-1200.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="1200" height="426" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-f9VAnBR71JI/Wlp_oR1SxhI/AAAAAAAAA-c/g-VlZIECdn8BGV0_1Lx8v8YKERny5klUQCLcBGAs/s640/05.16.17-Donald-Trump-1200.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>"We need more people who look like ME!"</b></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>&nbsp;</b></span></div></div>Jason Zenithhttps://plus.google.com/118413632629344209658noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13674306.post-64634353171292465192018-01-11T16:59:00.000-05:002018-01-11T16:59:21.087-05:00Steve Bannon's Delusions of Power Smashed Against Hard Rock of Reality<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Bannon has been banished from the Land of Trump. Good King Donald is said to be mightily vexed that Sir Stephen did blaspheme against the Good Names of King Trump's Son, Donald the True, and on the husband of the King's Daughter, Princess Ivanka, who is married to Jared the Valiant, even uttering the vile vituperation that Prince Donald did commit Treason against the Nation. By such base effrontery did Sir Stephen author his own Fate and cause himself to be cast out from the charmed circle of The Elect(ed).<br /><br />The indiscreet Bannon was too frank with a sneaky infiltrator of the Court, one Michael Wolff, known to be an inveterate peddler of rumor and inaccuracies, who took advantage of the King's good graces and, hidden behind a benign mask of <i>faux </i>friendship, came with mal-intent. Wolff is gleefully profiting from his treachery, peddling all over the Land with the help of sundry town criers a tome, whose title cheekily appropriates a quote from the King Himself, Who in defense of the Realm, righteously threatened a pipsqueak upstart Kingdom on the far side of the globe with "Fire and Fury." The underhanded Wolff has gone so far as to question the King's soundness of mind.<br /><br />Our Noble King did immediately put to good use the rapier-like wit for which He is justly renowned, christening the fallen Bannon "Sloppy Steve," a mirthful jape not even the cleverest adolescents of the Land could best.<br /><br />The Luckless Bannon, having fallen out of favor with His Majesty, is being ostracized by Respectable Society. His patron and benefactress, Rebekah of Mercer, has cut off the generous emoluments with which She favored him. The Accursed Bannon is no longer welcome even in his old haunt, the Breitbart Inn.<br /><br />His political nemesis, Lord McConnell of the Senate, is understood to be experiencing a pleasurable feeling that in the lands of the Germanic tribes is dubbed "schadenfreude," said to refer to satisfaction occasioned by the misfortune of another.....<br /><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-54uwqW4Atuo/WlfZi1a013I/AAAAAAAAA94/TR7I9XF_miw2PbckAWHWKb1nYgVl_nV0wCLcBGAs/s1600/2C66F8DF00000578-0-image-m-97_1442455925591%2Be.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="456" data-original-width="634" height="460" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-54uwqW4Atuo/WlfZi1a013I/AAAAAAAAA94/TR7I9XF_miw2PbckAWHWKb1nYgVl_nV0wCLcBGAs/s640/2C66F8DF00000578-0-image-m-97_1442455925591%2Be.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>The King Points Out That He Is Sound Of Mind</b></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>&nbsp;</b></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Meanwhile, in the 21st Century...</i></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>&nbsp;</i></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;">Bannon's high-speed plunge from a lofty, privileged&nbsp; peak of influence and power into the gutter of public opprobrium has been as rapid as that of Harvey "Come Up To My Hotel Room So I Can Show You My Script" Weinstein. It turns out that&nbsp; Bannon's power was always wholly derivative, not organic to himself. Outside of TrumpWorld, he is merely another extreme reactionary crank, bigot, white supremacist, anti-Semite, sexist, militaristic hypernationalist who likes to run his mouth. In other words, a guy who is a dime a dozen.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />Bannon was encouraged in his delusions of political potency by the U.S. media, which obsessively treated him as if he were powerful. They did this in part due to his proximity to Trump, and in part because they took him at his word that he really was the representative of millions of racist reactionaries, his self-anointed role. There was much excited speculation about whether candidates running in GOP (Gang Of Plunderers) primary elections, which he endorsed, would unseat candidates of Bannon's sworn enemies, the Republican "establishment," which he publicly reviled.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />I haven't heard any retractions or admissions of error by the establishment media for getting Bannon's true position so wrong, or for promoting him, nor by the media of that U.S.-toady nation, "Great" Britain, which aped the line of the American media.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />Bannon's very energetic ego met the immovable mountain that is reality, and the ego wilted. All his life, Bannon has been a pushy, arrogant, abusive bastard (and violent towards women- brave man!). He made a mint from his ownership stake in the Seinfeld TV hit, and was paid the big bucks as an "investment banker." His reactionary ideology no doubt opened many doors for him, as the U.S. establishment is reactionary to its core, notwithstanding the masks it wears to dupe the rest of us. But the reality of power is that Trump is president, and Trump is a major celebrity with millions of enthusiastic fans. Bannon is not. And Bannon openly declared himself an enemy of the Republican Party, which is squarely aligned behind Trump. When crunch time came, Bannon had no friends or allies with any clout on his side. Indeed, his avowed aim to "overthrow the establishment" made enemies of every Republican politician, even "insurgents" who would rather nail their flag to Trump's mast than to that of Bannon's rapidly sinking ship.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;">&nbsp;</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-mDwBx3gLifY/WlfaOJYM0OI/AAAAAAAAA-A/ZzgaKq9hIHUkthrhKP05JHfIF4FqCQFPQCLcBGAs/s1600/Bannon%2Bvlcsnap-0996-02-12-05h14m40s403.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="386" data-original-width="640" height="386" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-mDwBx3gLifY/WlfaOJYM0OI/AAAAAAAAA-A/ZzgaKq9hIHUkthrhKP05JHfIF4FqCQFPQCLcBGAs/s640/Bannon%2Bvlcsnap-0996-02-12-05h14m40s403.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">&nbsp; A Bummed-Out Bannon Mulls His Future</span></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">&nbsp;</span></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;">As for Wolff, he's long been a man on the make. A habitue of New York City media circles, during one period he kept trying to promote himself as a would-be media mogul. (Bannon and Trump aren't the only people in this saga with delusions.) He now boasts that his book will lead to Trump's downfall. Of course it won't. It's just more anti-Trump noise in the relentless anti-Trump campaign that most of the media, the Democratic Party, and the secret police agencies of the Deep State have been waging since Trump's election and with increased intensity after he was sworn into office. (The FBI has taken the lead in the covert side of this campaign to oust Trump or at a minimum tie him up and force him to carry out policies to the liking of the power structure as a whole, such as the new Cold War against Russia, but it is also no accident that top former secret police apparatchiks like Obama's CIA chieftain John Brennan, former NSA and CIA chieftain General Michael V. Hayden, and Obama's Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, have all publicly denounced Trump at various times.)</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;">&nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: small;">Wolff praised Bannon as a great strategist and "a man who can see two steps ahead." Maybe those are baby steps. Bannon couldn't see that badmouthing Trump's son and son-in-law wasn't a brilliant political chess move?<b> [1]</b></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>&nbsp;</b></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: small;">Wolff's book contains numerous factual errors, errors readily apparent. Wolff's publisher, like all major U.S. publishers, disavows any responsibility for the accuracy of what they sell as non-fiction, even though they commission the books, edit the books, print the books, publish the books, market the books, and sell the books. Wolff's book taps into a ravenous appetite for dirt on Trump. Since everyone involved is making boatloads of money, all is forgiven. And since most of the media is determined to Get Trump, they've pretended that Wolff's credibility isn't an issue, despite all the obvious factual errors. His portrait of <i>everyone </i>in Trump's orbit being horrified by him is surely nonsense. But Wolff cleverly wrote his story to conform to the contours of the negative image of Trump which has already been established. I largely agree that the image is true, except that calling Trump "unstable" is ridiculous. Trump's personality has been firmly fixed since adolescent. We have decades of a public record of his behavior. He's a narcissist, egomaniac, con man, rip-off artist, hustler, and inveterate liar. His personality is extremely stable. His character as an amoral charlatan is unchanging. He has robbed workers, contractors, banks, and "students" of his sham "university." Oh, and he's a confirmed racist.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: small;">&nbsp;</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: small;">The inexplicable thing about the Trump phenomenon is that this loathsome character has admirers, indeed millions of them. Or rather, it's only explicable if we grant that there are millions of dumb asses out there who are ethically defective, as is their idol- not an unreasonable assumption based on much evidence besides the popularity of Trump. This is a truth leftists are unable to face, as "the people" is <i>their </i>idol. But it is a fact that demagogues and despots, as well as run-of-the-mill politicians, have long exploited, in many times and places. It is a huge barrier to the evolution of a rational, humane, <i>normal </i>human civilization.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: small;">&nbsp;</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: small;">Janet Malcolm (named Jana Wienerova at birth) is a very privileged writer with a sinecure at <i>The</i> <i>New Yorker </i>magazine (hence very privileged) who wrote a two-part article for that magazine in March 1989, which she also peddled as a book, <i>The Journalist and the Murderer.</i> It's basic message is conveniently conveyed in the first sentence: "Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible." What she meant, in part, was that journalists trick people into trusting them, and then frequently betray that trust. Michael Wolff perhaps would meet with her disapproval- except that <i>The New Yorker</i> is a main cannon lobbing shells into TrumpWorld in the ongoing campaign to oust him from office. So Malcolm perhaps is in line with <i>The New Yorker </i>consensus. That would make Wolff an ally.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />Unfortunately, Malcolm's piece was an extended attack on and denunciation of journalist Joe McGinniss, for what she viewed as his reprehensible act of gaining the trust of the Green Beret Jeffrey MacDonald, and then accurately portraying him as the murderer he is. MacDonald had murdered his entire family, and claimed that LSD-crazed hippies had done the deed (sparing MacDonald himself for some odd reason). This blood libel against hippies by a trained killer was sickening. One of the main attributes of hippies was pacifism and non-violence. (No, Charles Manson wasn't a hippie, he was a psychopathic career criminal, and his cult followers were just a criminal gang.) Malcolm finds McGinniss morally despicable. MacDonald apparently not so much. There was great controversy over the MacDonald case because reactionaries preferred to believe the imaginary hippies did it.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />Interestingly, Malcolm is completely blind to her own moral hypocrisy. She did exactly the thing she condemned McGinniss for. Her victim was a psychoanalyst named Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson. This project also started out as New Yorker articles and became a book,&nbsp;<i> In The Freud Archives</i>. This was also back in the 1980s. I remember the articles well even today. They read as objective, descriptive accounts of Masson and doing at the Freud Archives, then suddenly near the end became a savage attack on Masson. I thought at the time, Gee, sure didn't see THAT hatchet coming! It was so over-the-top, and apparently unprovoked. Masson sued Malcolm for libel, but after a ten year legal battle, he lost, even though Malcolm was unable to offer written or recorded evidence for various "quotes" she put in Masson's mouth that made him sound like a sexual swinger who wanted to turn the Archives into something like the New York City sex swingers club Plato's Retreat. <b>[2]</b></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />So Malcolm actually is what she reviled in McGinniss, someone who gains a subject's trust only to betray it. Well, journalism is a dirty business, but a gal does what a gal's gotta do, I guess. The rest of us should only care if the result is truthful and accurate. And that is why Russia deserves a salute for providing us all with accurate information about Hillary Clinton, John Podesta, and the DNC in 2016, making the American electorate better-informed voters. Thus the Russians <b>strengthened American democracy!!&nbsp;</b></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>&nbsp;</b></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_P1Qy0_3xxQ/WlfcU2cEgTI/AAAAAAAAA-M/9EjBc5h2kjgUjrewe_MhRtIePcAJ1ApLACLcBGAs/s1600/Michael-Wolff-on-How-Washington-Will-Defeat-Trump.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="485" data-original-width="727" height="426" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_P1Qy0_3xxQ/WlfcU2cEgTI/AAAAAAAAA-M/9EjBc5h2kjgUjrewe_MhRtIePcAJ1ApLACLcBGAs/s640/Michael-Wolff-on-How-Washington-Will-Defeat-Trump.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>&nbsp;</b></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>A Wolff In Sheep's Clothes</b></span></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"><br /><b>1]</b> <a href="https://www.wnyc.org/story/midday-on-wnyc-2018-01-10/" target="_blank"><b>Wolff in radio interview</b></a>, WNYC-New York City, January 10, 2018, noon program. "Midday On WNYC."</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /><b>2]</b> Some of this is summarized in the Wikipedia entry for <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janet_Malcolm" target="_blank"><b>Janet Malcolm</b></a>.<br /><br /><br /><b>&nbsp;</b><br />&nbsp;</span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><b>&nbsp;</b></span></div></div><br /></div>Jason Zenithhttps://plus.google.com/118413632629344209658noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13674306.post-72983668194211211012017-12-29T16:42:00.000-05:002017-12-29T16:42:01.952-05:00Israeli Parliament Passes Netanyahu Criminal Protection Law<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">The Knesset has passed a law designed specifically to protect Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu from corruption charges. A member of his own party, Likud, put it forward.<br /><br />&nbsp;The new law blocks the Israeli police from revealing incriminating information about politicians prior to a formal indictment by the prosecutor's office. Over the years, the police have had to pressure the prosecutor to indict criminal politicians by publicizing the evidence they assembled. Israeli prosecutors are as much politicians as law enforcers, a situation one finds in many nations (including the U.S.). Netanyahu has greater sway over the prosecution office than over the police.<br /><br />Typical of rightwing fanatics, Netanyahu (and his son) is corrupt as well as repressive. He is the subject of two criminal investigation, involving taking gifts from wealthy businessmen, and his interference in the media business.<br /><br />Of course, while Israeli politicians move to increase their own rights and protections under Israeli law, Palestinians have no rights. Subject to arbitrary arrest, detention without trial, torture, and fake "trials" in kangaroo military "courts" (with a zero acquittal rate), this highlights the dual nature of Israeli "law" and "justice." Even Palestinian children are subject to vicious abuse by the Israeli "authorities."<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-IQitUb6fmGU/Wka16ed9_dI/AAAAAAAAA9g/X707oSBiKQYLkCmcVsMepnmFPYwIYZfkwCLcBGAs/s1600/israel-netanyahu.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="349" data-original-width="620" height="360" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-IQitUb6fmGU/Wka16ed9_dI/AAAAAAAAA9g/X707oSBiKQYLkCmcVsMepnmFPYwIYZfkwCLcBGAs/s640/israel-netanyahu.JPG" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Enough of this exposure of my corruption. Let's put an end to busybody police. Instead of busting my chops, they should be cracking Palestinian heads!</b></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>&nbsp;</b></span></div></div>Jason Zenithhttps://plus.google.com/118413632629344209658noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13674306.post-66359068932435490252017-12-22T16:24:00.003-05:002017-12-22T16:24:54.285-05:00See? I told you the Bitcoin Bubble Would Burst<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Five days ago the make-believe currency Bitcoin hit $20,000. Today it crashed to $10,000, a plunge of 50%, before recovering to $12,000 (that's a 20% rise). Bitcoin has gone through repeated bouts of bubbles and bursting bubbles over its existence. A chart of its history looks like a roller-coaster.<br />Bitcoin is fetishized by Libertarian types who are into digital technology. They have fantasies of liberation from government control through technology and a neo-laissez-faire capitalism. This is magical thinking.<br /><br />With every sharp rise in the price (NOT the value- it has no value) of Bitcoin, speculators pile in, driving the price up more. As in every market mania, there are shills who confidently assert the price will go much higher. (Some jackass insisted a few days ago that Bitcoin would go to $300,000.)<br /><br />It's the same in other markets. A capitalist polemicist and a pseudo-economist came out with a book in 1999, "Dow 36,000: The New Strategy for Profiting From the Coming Rise in the Stock Market." That would have been a fourfold increase, and they predicted it would be by 2002 or 2004. Guess what? Shortly thereafter stocks went into a major decline. And that was followed by the 2008 financial crisis, which caused the stock market to collapse.<br /><br />Another fool, a "certified financial advisor," pushed a book, "Dow, 30,000 by 2008- Why It's Different This Time."<br /><br />Yet another shill came out with a tome in 1999, "Dow 40,000: Strategies for Profiting from the Greatest Bull Market in History."<br /><br />You can still buy this crap on Amazon, amazingly enough. Why anyone would want to buy very wrong, very bad predictions from the past is a puzzle.<br /><br />For an explanation of what is genuinely destructive about Bitcoin, see "<a href="https://taboo-truths.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-great-bitcoin-con-game-and-how-its.html" target="_blank"><b>The Great Bitcoin Con Game and How It's Harming Everyone On Earth</b></a>." (It contributes to global warming.)<br />https://taboo-truths.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-great-bitcoin-con-game-and-how-its.html<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>Jason Zenithhttps://plus.google.com/118413632629344209658noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13674306.post-79522582010521443272017-12-20T17:48:00.001-05:002017-12-20T17:48:30.572-05:00How The Media Acted As Accomplices to the Sex Crimes of Harvey Weinstein (and of many others)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">The American Media is Like the Germans: Either At Your Feet or At Your Throat.<br /><div><br /></div><div>One aspect of American (and not only American) media is starkly&nbsp;<b>illustrated&nbsp;[1]&nbsp;</b>by the Harvey Weinstein affair, and that is its tendency to either be fawning sycophants or a lynch mob. That is, a former darling can be turned on suddenly and ferociously. The target can be the same person previously adored, or a foreign nation or ruler when the "interests" of the attacking media's nation warrant a reversal of attitude. Examples of this are the reversal of political polarity from positive to negative when the Shah of Iran was toppled and the Shiite theocrats took over; when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait; and the Soviet Union, which went from enemy from 1917 to 1942, when it became friend, then back to enemy from 1945 until 1989 when Gorbachev surrendered the client states of Eastern Europe. (The S.U. ultimately shattered into pieces in 1991.)</div><div><br /></div><div>This is not to say Weinstein doesn't deserve strong condemnation. It SHOULD raise questions about the media's former sycophancy towards him. Indeed,&nbsp;<b>it aided and abetted his abuses of and attacks on&nbsp;women</b>. And even though that is obvious, the media has managed to totally ignore that aspect of the issue. Here's just some of the proof of media complicity in Weinstein's crimes:</div><div><br /></div><div>Buried in a long&nbsp;<i>New Yorker&nbsp;</i>article by Ronan Farrow about Weinstein's sexual assaults and coercive behavior was evidence of media complicity in aiding and abetting his crimes. How witting or clueless his media enablers were has not been revealed&nbsp;<i><b>by&nbsp;</b></i>the media.&nbsp; Here are excerpts with key words highlighted by me in&nbsp;<b>bold</b>:</div><div><br /></div><div><div><i>Virtually all of the people I spoke with told me that they were frightened of retaliation. “If Harvey were to discover my identity, I’m worried that he could ruin my life,” one former employee told me. Many said that they had seen Weinstein’s associates confront and intimidate those who crossed him, and feared that they would be similarly targeted. Four actresses, including Mira Sorvino and Rosanna Arquette, told me they suspected that, after they rejected Weinstein’s advances or complained about them to company representatives, Weinstein had them removed from projects or dissuaded people from hiring them. Multiple sources said that&nbsp;<b>Weinstein frequently bragged about planting items in media outlets about those who spoke against him; these sources feared that they might be similarly targeted. Several pointed to Gutierrez’s case, in 2015: after she went to the police, negative items discussing her sexual history and impugning her credibility began rapidly appearing in New York gossip pages.</b></i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>“This wasn’t a one-off. This wasn’t a period of time,” an executive who worked for Weinstein for many years told me. “This was ongoing predatory behavior towards women—whether they consented or not.</i>”</div><div><br /></div><div><b>And</b>:&nbsp;&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div><div><i>“Textbook sexual harassment” was how Nestor [a young female employee] described Weinstein’s behavior to me. “It’s a pretty clear case of sexual harassment when your superior, the C.E.O., asks one of their inferiors, a temp, to have sex with them, essentially in exchange for mentorship.” She recalled refusing his advances at least a dozen times. “ ‘No’ did not mean ‘no’ to him,” she said. “I was very aware of how inappropriate it was. But I felt trapped.”</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Throughout the breakfast, she said, Weinstein interrupted their conversation to yell into his cell phone, enraged over a spat that Amy Adams, a star in the Weinstein movie “Big Eyes,” was having in the press. Afterward,&nbsp;<b>Weinstein told Nestor to keep an eye on the news cycle, which he promised would be spun in his favor. Later in the day, there were indeed negative news items about his opponents, and Weinstein stopped by Nestor’s desk to be sure that she’d seen them.</b></i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>By that point, Nestor recalled, “I was very afraid of him. And I knew how well connected he was."</i></div></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><div>Notice that Farrow and&nbsp;<i>The New Yorker&nbsp;</i>protect the identities of the media organs that willingly, probably eagerly, ran whatever malicious propaganda Weinstein chose to plant with them. Media people stick together. They are a tightknit fraternity (except when it came to Michael Hastings, for one, who was ostracized for reporting the contemptuous attitude of General Stanley McCrystal, and the horrible example he set for his staff, towards his commander-in-chief, the president of the United States, and the rest of the civilian leadership, the alleged superiors to the military, and who have been accessories after the fact in Hastings assassination by refusing to report the obvious facts, much less investigate it), who in general have an all-around non-aggression pact with each other (excepting Murdoch's minions, who gleefully attack other major media organs, because like all fascists, they consider themselves the only legitimate pretenders to power). There is also the desire not to close the doors to potential future employers on the part of the reporters and commentators. They are all careerists who rely on friendly relations to gain exposure for themselves. So both institutional and personal factors create a system of media self-protection. Once in awhile these media actors put on a show of self-reflection, self-analysis, self-pseudo-criticism, which are invariably acts of self-protection, justification, exoneration, sprinkled with what the CIA dubs limited hang-outs, that ism, dribbling out seeming "revelations" while keeping the most damaging facts and truths well-hidden.</div><div style="font-style: italic;"><br /></div></div><div>Despite the efforts of&nbsp;<i>The New Yorker</i>&nbsp;to protect the guilty, we know from other sources (in this case the WNYC radio program On The Media, October 13, 2017) that in the most egregious case, the attack on&nbsp; &nbsp; the woman who instigated the New York City police criminal investigation of Weinstein, to discredit her,&nbsp;<b>Weinstein's media accomplices were Murdoch's minions at his reactionary rag New York Post "news"paper,</b>&nbsp;specifically Page Six, a tawdry "gossip" and political attack column. Fitting that it should be so. Murdoch has long been an employer of sexual predators, including but not limited to Roger Ailes, the evil, Mephistophelian founder of Murdoch's vile agitpropaganda pseudo-news channel, Fox "News," and the former top on-air propagandist on that network, Bill "SHUT UP!" O'Reilly. Among his numerous major crimes, Ailes organized the rehabilitation of the image of the loathsome Richard Nixon in 1968, helping elect Nixon president, from which position Nixon rained bombs down on Vietnam and destroyed democracy in Chile with a CIA-Pentagon coup, among numerous other crimes against humanity, domestic and foreign. To be sure, the CIA played the crucial role in electing Nixon, first by assassinating Martin Luther King, Jr., in April 1968, prompting justified rioting by blacks which played straight into Nixon's racist "law and order" campaign theme (code for "repress the blacks") but especially in June by murdering Robert Kennedy, who would have defeated Nixon in the November election had the CIA not eliminated him. (As it was, Nixon barely edged the ultimate Democratic candidate by less than a percentage point, the loathsome Hubert Humphrey, Lyndon Johnson's vice president, who discredited himself with liberal voters by his sycophantic support for Johnson's Vietnam war.)</div><div><br /></div><div><div>Just to return to the relatively trivial matter of a disgusting movie industry poohbah abusing his power, and the major corporate media protecting him: NBC refused to run Ronan Farrow's story about Weinstein, so he took it to<i>&nbsp;The New Yorker</i>.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>1] Illustrated,</b>&nbsp;but ignored by that same media, of course.</div></div><div><br /></div><div><b>2]&nbsp;</b>"<b><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/from-aggressive-overtures-to-sexual-assault-harvey-weinsteins-accusers-tell-their-stories" target="_blank">From Aggressive Overtures to Sexual Assault: Harvey Weinstein’s Accusers Tell Their Stories: Multiple women share harrowing accounts of sexual assault and harassment by the film executive</a>,</b>" By Ronan Farrow,&nbsp;<i>The New Yorker&nbsp;</i>magazine, October 10, 2017</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><h3 style="text-align: center;">Sex criminals Weinstein, O'Reilly, Roger Ailes- beneath their politics, birds of a feather.</h3></div></div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-BPEsWD4EoOU/WjrlAPWDRqI/AAAAAAAAA9A/AbG01Pka3fsTrZtlgd7DeWpJ9aax2M-0QCLcBGAs/s1600/Harvey%2BWeinstein%2Band%2BHillary%2BClinton%2Bin%2B2012.%2BMr.%2BWeinstein%2Bheld%2Ba%2Bfund-raiser%2Bfor%2BMrs.%2BClinton%2Bat%2Bhis%2BManhattan%2Bhome%2B%2B2016.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="449" data-original-width="675" height="424" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-BPEsWD4EoOU/WjrlAPWDRqI/AAAAAAAAA9A/AbG01Pka3fsTrZtlgd7DeWpJ9aax2M-0QCLcBGAs/s640/Harvey%2BWeinstein%2Band%2BHillary%2BClinton%2Bin%2B2012.%2BMr.%2BWeinstein%2Bheld%2Ba%2Bfund-raiser%2Bfor%2BMrs.%2BClinton%2Bat%2Bhis%2BManhattan%2Bhome%2B%2B2016.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>"HEY! Who's molesting who!" Hillary Clinton just can't keep her hands off Harvey Weinstein. (Hint: She loves his money. I mean, his "donations" because he "supports what she stands for" and "the values of the Democratic Party." Yeah, right.)</b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><br /></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><br /></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><br /></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-TjxiptYtK1s/Wjrla3Xy_NI/AAAAAAAAA9E/ZirIU06A0SYY9JNmTlWvsK0E_6R0DM4xQCLcBGAs/s1600/fox-news-bill-oreilly-goes-ballistic-on-alan-colmes-you-are-lying-you-are-lying.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="253" data-original-width="338" height="478" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-TjxiptYtK1s/Wjrla3Xy_NI/AAAAAAAAA9E/ZirIU06A0SYY9JNmTlWvsK0E_6R0DM4xQCLcBGAs/s640/fox-news-bill-oreilly-goes-ballistic-on-alan-colmes-you-are-lying-you-are-lying.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>"Stupid bitch, here's how you give a blowjob!" Victim of multiple misunderstandings Bill O'Reilly was merely conducting one-on-one sex ed lessons.</b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ByXY4PsfENU/WjrlonL5owI/AAAAAAAAA9M/KoeQ66j3C2E0lHJtld4B9F5qjM3WFaQ3QCLcBGAs/s1600/Ailes%252C%2BRoger%2B%2Bkissy%2Bkissy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="412" data-original-width="338" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ByXY4PsfENU/WjrlonL5owI/AAAAAAAAA9M/KoeQ66j3C2E0lHJtld4B9F5qjM3WFaQ3QCLcBGAs/s640/Ailes%252C%2BRoger%2B%2Bkissy%2Bkissy.jpg" width="524" /></a></div><div><b>Who could resist sexy Roger Ailes! We sure do miss Rupert Murdoch's propaganda master, the man who invented the "new Nixon" of 1968. (Meet the New Nixon, same as the Old Nixon.)</b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-QCk6yz177hk/WjrlzFkFU8I/AAAAAAAAA9Q/rmAdq__9e4IQkbNXR_i0wqi3aXPM6rJuwCLcBGAs/s1600/3500%2B%25282%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="961" data-original-width="1600" height="384" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-QCk6yz177hk/WjrlzFkFU8I/AAAAAAAAA9Q/rmAdq__9e4IQkbNXR_i0wqi3aXPM6rJuwCLcBGAs/s640/3500%2B%25282%2529.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div><b>And give credit where credit is due: The Man who empowered the sex fiends and spreaders of socially destructive reactionary agitprop Ailes and O'Reilly, the Global Master Propagandist himself, Rupert Murdoch, the Ageless One.</b></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><br /></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><br /></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><br /></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><br /></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><br /></b></div></div>Jason Zenithhttps://plus.google.com/118413632629344209658noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13674306.post-8184234032139488722017-12-20T17:14:00.001-05:002017-12-20T17:14:34.387-05:00The Great Bitcoin Con Game and How It's Harming Everyone On Earth<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">First of all, what is Bitcoin?<br /><br />Bitcoin is fake money. That is, you can't actually shop with it.<b>&nbsp;[1]</b><br /><br />And unlike gold, another "alternative" currency, it has no tangible physical existence and no uses (gold has manufacturing uses, also in dentistry, and as jewelry).<br /><br />The current Bitcoin Bubble is madder than the Dutch tulip frenzy. A year ago, this make-believe money was trading for $700 per Bitcoin- and even that was absurd for something with no actual value whatsoever. Yet it's risen over&nbsp;<i>2000 percent.</i><br /><br />Some U.S. futures exchanges just jumped in to get in on the action. In the first day of trading, the Bitcoin contract closed up 20%, to $18,545.&nbsp;<b>[2]</b><br /><br />Unlike other speculative manias, this one is based on absolutely nothing. Even the tulip mania had a physical basis- flowers. Likewise stock market frenzies have actual companies at base. Futures markets trade currencies and commodities like metals and agricultural products. Other exotic speculative instruments were founded on U.S. Government Treasury obligations or aggregated home mortgages.<br /><br />Bitcoin is based on absolutely nothing, and is backed by no government or central bank. It is a notional pseudo-currency.<br /><br />The only physical reality of it is the computers doing massive mathematical calculations that is the game that "creates" the non-existent "currency," the Bitcoins.<br /><br />It turns out that those computers use more electricity than the nation of Ireland (population 4.7 million people).&nbsp;<b>[3]</b><br /><br />Power plants have to generate that electricity. It turns out that at least half of the computing done to keep this speculative bubble of nothing inflated occurs in China. China burns coal for most of its electricity. Coal is highly polluting, and releases large amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, warming the planet.&nbsp;<br /><br />Thus we have a perfect expression of pure capitalist parasitism helping to wreak havoc on the climate, creating more and fiercer hurricanes, ultimately leading to sea level rises that will flood the coastal regions (and cities) of the continents and create drought and massive famines. In California the Governor has cites global warming as a cause of the massive forest fires that is burning large swaths of that state.<br /><br />The insane bubble in Bitcoin will inevitably end in tears for some unlucky speculators. (Others with lucky timing will make a killing.) But the real lasting damage is to the planet we live on.&nbsp; A planet unfortunately at the mercy of greedy parasites.<br /><br /><b>1]</b>&nbsp; Only a very few merchants are accepting Bitcoin as payment for purchases. Out of the hundreds of millions of sellers on the planet. And Bitcoin is used for some criminal activities. And computer ransomware extortionists are starting to demand payment in Bitcoins.<br /><br /><b>2]&nbsp;&nbsp;</b>Bitcoin started trading on the Chicago Futures and Options Exchanges. On Monday, December 18, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange is going to jump in on the hot action.<br /><br /><b>3]&nbsp;</b>&nbsp;BBC, December 12, 2017, morning broadcast.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>Jason Zenithhttps://plus.google.com/118413632629344209658noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13674306.post-28091604672580130952017-12-18T17:01:00.003-05:002017-12-18T17:01:57.917-05:00Another Example of the Democratic Party Treating Their "Base" Like Dirt<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Here's a brief item (four paragraphs in total) from the <i>Wall Street Journal's</i> "Washington Wire" column under the heading "Government Ethics," titled "IRS Scrutiny Hooks Left-Leaning Groups." I have annotated it with facts omitted from the piece, and with the larger political context.<b> [1]</b><br /><br /><i>Some nonprofit groups received scrutiny from the Internal Revenue Service through the use of screening terms that would single out left-leaning groups, according to an inspector general's report released Thursday. </i>[October 5.]<br /><br /><i>What happened to those groups from 2004 to 2013</i> [i.e under <b>both </b>Bush the Younger and Barack "The Drone Assassin" Obama]<i> was similar to the treatment that tea-party groups received from 2010 to 2012.</i> [Except that the tea-party groups were only targeted by a Democratic regime, and only for no more than three years- and there was a huge political brouhaha over it, and calls for criminal prosecutions of IRS officials, and forced resignations, whereas there was <b>no reaction at all </b>to the persecution of "leftists" for <b>nine to ten years</b>, and just a little article years later in a business paper.] <i>A report from the same inspector general about conservative groups in 2013 led to the resignation of then-acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller.</i> [And of IRS official Lois Lerner, who had to hire criminal defense lawyers to deal with the threat of indictment as Republican politicians and the rightwing media mob were demanding.]<br /><br /><i>"Democrats should be outraged," said Rep. Kevin Brady (R., Texas), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, about the new report. "The IRS targeted Americans based on their political beliefs, both parties."</i><br /><br /><i>Some Democrats have said the report shows that there wasn't political bias or targeting at the IRS. They said the problem was poor management and unclear rules about how to define political activity and how much is acceptable for different types of nonprofits. </i>[End.]<br /><br />Notice the essential unity of the two corporate imperialist parties that form a political cartel, both persecuting "leftists"&nbsp;whether it's a Democratic or Republican regime. Of course, throughout U.S. history, progressives of all stripes have been systematically surveiled, harassed, persecuted, subjected to various "dirty tricks" like thefts and sabotage of every stripe, imprisoned, and murdered by state agents and institutions, while reactionaries have had almost entirely free rein, including to commit thousands of acts of terrorism. (Examples: the Ku Klux Klan, the lynchings of thousands of blacks, the reign of terror against the civil rights movement in the 1950's and '60's, the thousands of attacks on abortion clinics, assassinations of anti-establishment activists by rightwing terrorists the secret police use as cut-outs, and more.)<br /><br />Whether it's anti-abortion fanatics, Christian fundamentalists, gun fetishists, or people who want to shrink government down small enough to drown it in a bathtub, the GOP (Gang Of Plunderers) always obsequiously panders to its base, at least in rhetoric. And it serves most of those groups' interests, passing laws (especially on the state level) making abortions relentlessly more onerous to obtain, loosening gun laws to the point that the Texas state government has forced universities in that state to allow students to carry guns on campus, against the objections of those institutions allegedly dedicated to education and free thought. And in league with the Democrats, passing draconian laws that in practice target blacks and Hispanics for imprisonment, and tax laws that grossly favor the rich and large corporations.<br /><br /><b>1]</b><i> Wall Street Journal</i>, October 6, 2017, page A5.<br /><br /><br /><br /></div>Jason Zenithhttps://plus.google.com/118413632629344209658noreply@blogger.com0